
Rook- . ^3 






SISTERS OE CHAEITY, 



CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT. 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



BY 

MRS. JAMESON. 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR AND FIELDS. 

MDCCCLYII. 



4> 






By 5 



CAMBRIDGE: 
THURSTON AND TORRY, PRINTERS. 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. 



If on this verse of mine 

Those eyes shall ever shine, 
Whereto sore-wounded men have looked for life. 

Think not that for a rhyme, 

Nor yet to fit the time, 
I name thy name, — true victress in this strife ! 

But let it serve to say 

That, when we kneel to pray. 
Prayers rise for thee thine ear shall never know ; 

And that thy gallant deed, 

For God, and for our need. 
Is in all hearts, as deep as love can go. 

'Tis good that thy name springs 

From two of Earth's fair things, — 
A stately city and a soft-voiced bird ; 

'Tis well that in all homes. 

When thy sweet story comes. 
And brave eyes fill — that pleasant sounds be heard. 

Oh voice ! in night of fear. 

As night's bird, soft to hear. 
Oh great heart ! raised like city on a hill ; 

Oh watcher ! worn and pale. 

Good Florence Nightingale, 
Thanks, loving thanks, for thy large work and will ! 

England is glad of thee, — 

Christ for thy charity, 
Take thee to joy when hand and heart are still ! 

EDWIN AUNOLD. 



SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT, 

ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



" It is manifest that all the human material which Christian endeavors 
may be able to mould into order and usefulness, will be required for the 
growing exigencies of the state." — Kev. Mr. Clay. {Report on the 
Preston Jail^ 1852.) 



1* 



PREFACE 

TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

A SECOND Edition of this little lecture, (or 
essay, for I hardly know which to call it,) 
being required within the short period of a 
month, I seize the opportunity to add a few 
words to the preface already printed. 

The reception, altogether unexpected, which 
the principles here so briefly and so imperfectly 
announced have met with, I certainly do not 
take to be any testimony to the merit of the 
book, as such, but rather as a proof that it has 
struck upon a chord of feeling in the public 
mind, tuned and ready to vibrate to the most 
unpractised touch. So unlooked-for, indeed, 
has been the general expression of responsive 
sympathy, public and private, that the hand 
laid thus timidly and unskilfully upon the 
chords, almost "recoils from the sound itself 
hath made." 

Not less have I been touched with pleasure 
and surprise by the numerous communications 



8 PREFACE TO 

which almost every post has brought to me 
from medical men, from clergymen, from in- 
telligent women, (the greater number strangers 
to me personally,) either, expressive of cordial 
sympathy, or conveying practical suggestions, 
or offering aid and co-operation; — all, how- 
ever various the contents, testifying to the great 
truths I have endeavored to illustrate in these 
pages : namely, that there exists at the core of 
our social condition a great mistake to be 
corrected, and a great want supplied; that 
men and women must learn to understand 
each other, and work together for the common 
good, before any amount of permanent moral 
and religious progress can be effected ; and 
that, in the most comprehensive sense of the 
word, we need Sisters of Charity every- 
where. 

In some few of these letters a tone of ex- 
postulation mingles with that of kind approval; 
and my attention is directed to various insti- 
tutions which exist at present as filling up the 
want I have pointed out ; — for instance, the 
efficiency of some of the Normal schools for 
the preparation of female teachers, and the 
encouragement which has been given to the 
houses recently established for training sick 
nurses, are especially dwelt upon. I learn that 
one of our most distinguished men entertains 



THE SECOND EDITION. V 

the prc^'ect of organizing " classes " for work- 
ingwornen, as lie has already aided in elevating 
the mental and moral standard for the working- 
men. Again, there are hopes that, in spite of 
all opposing influences, lessons in elementary- 
physiology will be more generally introduced 
into schools. God forbid that we should be 
insensible to the efforts which have been made, 
and are extending in all directions, for the 
amelioration of crying social evils ! But what 
we require is not more benevolence, but the 
general recognition of sounder and larger prin- 
ciples than have hitherto directed that bene- 
volence. With all our schools of all denomi- 
nations, it remains an astounding fact, that 
one half of the women who annually become 
wives in this England of ours cannot sign 
their names in the parish register ; that this 
amount of ignorance in the lower classes is 
accompanied by an amount of ill health, de- 
spondency, inaptitude, and uselessness in the 
so-called "educated classes;" which, taken 
together, prove that our boasted appliances 
are, to a great extent, failures. 

And, first, with regard to the means afforded 
for training nurses for the sick. I would ask 
what is the number of women so trained ? 
Does it amount to one in every five hundred 
thousand of our female population ? Does it 



10 PREFACE TO 

amount to one hundred altogether? ^nd for 
whose service are these women trained ? Are 
they distributed among our village poor, our 
country infirmaries ? Up to a very recent 
period, till the need of nurses for the East 
excited public attention, were not the greater 
number of these trained nurses in the ser- 
vice of the rich ? What is done is well done, 
perhaps ; let us be thankful it is done ; but 
is it sufficient ? Does it meet those wants in 
the community which I have ventured to point 
out in the pages which follow ? 

Go into yon spacious hospital, provided wdth 
all that wealth, and skill, and knowledge can 
combine to heal or to ameliorate bodily suffer- 
ing : see the floors how clean, the linen how 
spotless, the beds how comfortable! the most 
celebrated of our surgeons and physicians are 
in attendance ; students from every part of 
England crowd thither; — it is one of the best 
of our medical schools. Let us approach a bed ; 
— it is a poor pale girl, dying of a slow de- 
cline ; she has been stretched there for eleven 
months ; the chaplain duly visits her once or 
twice a week in her turn, for he has about 
five hundred other human souls to attend to. 
The physician, as he goes his rounds, pats 
her on the head ; asks her, in a tone of un- 
usual pity, the usual questions ; then, perhaps, 



THE SECOND EDITION. 11 

turns to two or three students who follow him, 
and almost aloud expresses his wonder to find 
her still alive. The nurse duly administers 
the prescription, and on pain of dismissal sees 
that every want is attended to. Is nothing 
else needed ? Is anything else supplied ? A 
melancholy religious tract, perhaps : but for 
the spontaneous action of mind upon mind, — 
for tender, human, sympathizing love, — for 
help to the sinking spirit, — where are they? 
It is no answer to appeal to individual cases ; 
to cite one or two hospitals, in which thought- 
ful and kindly women of the higher classes 
have been permitted to visit ; — in which the 
superior intellect and administrative faculties 
of the matron for the time being have exer- 
cised an improving influence. These are the 
exceptions ; and until larger, higher principles 
of action are generally recognized, they will 
continue to be accidental exceptions to the prev- 
alence of a narrow-minded mechanical system. 
In several of the letters I have received, the 
condition of some of our workhouses, in town 
and country, is set forth at length : and surely 
it is worth considering whether the adminis- 
tration of these institutions might not be im- 
proved by the aid of kindly and intelligent 
women sharing with the overseers the task of 
supervision. The most conscientious men arc 



12 PREFACE TO 

apt to treat the wretched paupers as if they 
had neither hearts to be touched, nor souls to 
be saved. The paid matrons are taken from 
a class scarcely a grade above them ; often as 
ignorant, as miserable, as debased as them- 
selves, and wholly unfit to be intrusted witH 
power. Do the aged, while swallowing per- 
force the dregs of a bitter life, find any rever- 
ence, any pity ? Do the children, — poor little 
scraps of a despised humanity, — find tender- 
ness, freedom, or cheerfulness ? Can any one 
doubt that the element of power disunited 
from the element of Christian love must in 
the long run become a hard, cold, cruel ma- 
chine ? and that this must of necessity be the 
result where the masculine energy acts inde- 
pendent of the feminine sympathies ? The 
men who manage in their own way these 
abodes of destitution, dread, not without some 
reason, any troublesome interference with es- 
tablished routine through the intervention of 
impulsive womanly instincts, which, ill- trained, 
misdirected, and unenlightened, may do mis- 
chief; but must they, therefore, be set wholly 
aside ? How long shall this absurd and un- 
manly jealousy in one class of men, — the men 
who fill public or municipal offices, — be 
allowed to petrify the public heart, and cripple 
the means of doing good? How long shall 



THE SECOND EDITION. 13 

the narrow prejudices of another class of men, 
— the husbands, brothers, and fathers, — with- 
hold women from a sphere of healthy action, 
and thus perpetuate and widen the gulf which 
separates class from class ? 

The principle kept in view by the Poor Law 
guardians and overseers is to save the money 
of the parish, — a very proper and honorable 
principle in those who have to administer it ; — 
but is not a wiser and more beneficent expen- 
diture of the parish rates possible ? Some of 
those who are largely taxed to pay those rates 
think so. Since it is allowed on all hands 
that we want Institutions for the training of 
efficient " Sisters of Charity " for all offices 
connected with the sick, the indigent, the 
fallen, and the ignorant among us, why should 
not our parish workhouses be made available 
for the purpose ? In such an application of 
means and funds already at hand, it appears 
to me that there would be both good sense 
and economy, therefore it ought to recommend 
itself to our so-called practical men. 

I remember when, some years ago, the first 
trial was made at Birmingham to institute 
what has since been called ^' Schools for the 
Adult Females employed in the Manufac- 
tories." The Legislature had restricted the 
hours of labor, and the women, when dis- 
2 



14 PREFACE TO 

missed from work, shrunk into lonely, dirty, 
neglected homes, or walked the streets, or con- 
gregated into the vilest public-houses. They 
earned good wages, yet hardly one in ten 
could read or write ; they were ignorant of 
any feminine or household work; they were 
dirty, reckless, wasteful ; unsexed, if not un- 
chaste. Some ladies, true " Sisters of Char- 
ity," united to open a refuge where these 
women could obtain light and warmth with- 
out the temptation of drink and bad company, 
and the means of instruction if they were so 
minded, although it was not forced upon them. 
"Will it be believed that every possible diffi- 
culty and obstacle v/as thrown in the way of 
this project by masters and overseers? — 
Those who undertook the work of mercy, and 
at length carried it out, had to conquer the 
ground occupied by masculine prejudices inch 
by inch ; and now it is among the women they 
have rescued that the employers seek their 
steadiest female " hands," that the workmen 
look for tidy, good tempered wives. 

Another point to which my attention has 
been drawn, and which has an especial interest 
at present, is the condition of the soldiers' 
wives. I hardly dare to describe the state of 
things which has been allowed to exist in the 
barracks and military depots up to the present 



THE SECOND EDITION. 15 

time ; — from six to sixteen married couples 
sleeping together in one room, and in some 
instances unmarried girls, daughters of the 
soldiers, living among them, and brought up 
in this human stye ! When a woman of 
decent habits is introduced to such a scene, 
can we wonder that in a few weeks she should 
become a mere female beast, or learn to drown 
in drink the unutterable misery and degrada- 
tion of her position ? Who are the " officers 
and gentlemen" who honor their mothers, 
who guard with such care the delicacy of their 
wives and daughters, yet can expose women 
to ignominy like this ? If the wives of these 
" officers and gentlemen " were expected, as a 
matter of duty, incident to their social posi- 
tion, or, at least, were allowed by their hus- 
bands, to take an interest in the well-being of 
the soldiers and their wives, could these things 
have existed ? Is it not matter of astonish- 
ment and humiliation among us that the expe- 
diency of giving decent lodging to the married 
men is only now discussed by the military 
authorities ? I would suggest that the well- 
educated, and benevolent, and energetic wo- 
men married to officers in command, should 
take counsel with their husbands on the possi- 
bility of organizing into an efficient working 
staff the women who belong to each regiment. 



16 PREFACE TO 

Instead of only the most depraved and worth- 
less women being allowed to inhabit the bar- 
racks, these should be turned out, while the 
most respectable should be retained and 
classed according to their capabilities ; some 
as teachers of the children ; some as nurses 
of the sick; others as sempstresses to mend 
and take care of the linen ; others as washer- 
women. What sort of creatures are those 
who have gone to the East with our army ? — 
Are they not a despair, a disgrace to our au- 
thorities, — as utterly uselses as they are 
utterly worthless ? We have now the spirit 
of a noble womanhood, roused up at home 
and at a distance, to remedy these evils ; but 
had it been earlier roused, and earlier used 
and appreciated, such evils never could have 
existed. 

I must conclude by thanking my correspon- 
dents generally for the approbation which has 
cheered, and the sympathy which has com- 
forted. Considerations of health take me far 
away from England for the present ; but on 
my retm*n I hope to find kindly and active 
spirits and wise heads doing the practical 
work which I cannot do myself. It has been 
said that we need some protest against the 
tendency of this age to deify mere material 
power, mere mechanism, mere intellect, and 



THE SECOND EDITION. 17 

what is called the " philosophy of the posUifJ^ 
It appears to me that God's good providence 
is preparing such a counterpoise in the more 
equal and natural apportioning of the work 
that is to be done on earth ; in the due min- 
gling of the softer charities and purer moral 
discipline of the home life with all the material 
interests of social and political life; in the 
better training of the affectionate instincts of 
the woman's nature, and the application of 
these to purposes and objects which have hith- 
erto been considered as out of their province 
or beyond their reach ; for what can concern 
the community at large which does not con- 
cern women also ? 

May 1, 1855. 



2* 



PREFACE 

TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

I HAVE been induced to publish this little 
Lecture in its present form, because it places 
some of the questions which are now promi- 
nently before the public on grounds which, 
if not new, are at least not generally admitted, 
still less advocated. The results of a large 
amount of private information and of per- 
sonal observation are here condensed into the 
smallest possible compass. I have also used 
unhesitatingly all the published material at 
hand, from which I could extract either 
thought, or fact, available for my purpose. 
I must especially acknowledge my obligations 
to a little book, entitled " Hospitals and 
Sisterhoods " (published by Murray) ; to a 
small pamphlet, entitled " Kaiserswerth on the 
Rhine " (published by Hookham) ; and to the 



20 PREFACE TO 

Reports of the last named Institution placed 
in my hands some time ago. Other author- 
ities are referred to in the notes, but I could 
not certify all. In fact, the following pages 
contain the spirit — quintesseiicie — of my ex- 
perience, observation, and reading, on the 
education and employments of women for 
many years past. 

The subject has suddenly taken a form 
which appeals to popular sympathies. Names 
and deeds have, of late, been sounded through . 
the brazen trumpet of publicity, and mixed 
up, unhappily, with party and sectarian 
discord, which ought rather to have been 
whispered tenderly and reverentially in our 
prayers ; but since it is so, and cannot now 
be helped, I have not hesitated to allude to 
persons and to circumstances which, I trust, 
are not the less dear because they have be- 
come in some sort public property, nor the 
less sacred, because they have become cele- 
brated. 

I have received since this Lecture was 
delivered, or rather read^ many communica- 
tions, either expressive of sympathy or illus- 



THE FIRST EDITION. 21 

trating by additional facts the arguments 
which are here very summarily and unme- 
thodically brought together. I cannot despair 
of the practical result, however distant it may 
seem ; nor can I look round me without being 
"transported beyond this ignorant present" 
into that wiser future, which I as confidently 
anticipate, as I truly believe in the goodness 
and all-ruling providence of God. 

A. J. 

' March 26, 1855. 



SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

A LECTURE 

{Delivered privately February l^th, 1855, and printed by desire). 



My Friends : — The subject on which I 
venture to address you is one which will 
find an interest in every kind heart. It is 
also one of incalculable social importance. 
I am to discourse to you of Sisters of 
Charity, not merely as the designation of 
a particular order of religious women, belong- 
ing to a particular church, but also in a far 
more comprehensive sense, as indicating the 
vocation of- a large number of women in 
every country, class, and creed. I wish to 
point out to you what has been done in other 
countries, and may be done in ours, to make 
this vocation available for public uses and for 
social progress. 



24 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

I have to beg your patience, — your indul- 
gence. It will be necessary for me to advert 
to subjects on which there exists considerable 
difference of opinion; while the brevity re- 
quired by a lecture will not allow me to dis- 
cuss these at length, or to submit all the argu- 
ments which might be advanced in favor of 
my own convictions. I am obliged to con- 
centrate what I have to say into the smallest 
possible compass ; nevertheless, by recurring 
to first principles, instead of discussing ways 
and means, and questions of expediency, I 
think I shall facilitate the object in view. 
The deeper we can lay our foundation, the 
safer will be our superstructure. Therefore, 
to begin at the beginning: — 

There are many different theories concern- 
ing the moral purposes of this world in which 
we dwell, considered, I mean, in reference to 
us, its human inhabitants ; for some regard it 
merely as a state of transition between two 
conditions of existence, a past and a future ; 
others as being worthless in itself, except as a 
probation or preparation for a better and a 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 25 

higher life ; while others, absorbed or saddened 
by the monstrous evils and sorrows around 
them, have really come to regard it as a place 
of punishment or penance for sins committed 
in a former state of existence. But I think 
that the best definition, — the best, at least, 
for our present purpose, — is that of Shaks- 
peare : he calls it, with his usual felicity of 
expression, ^mds working-day world ;^^ and it 
is truly this : it is a place where work is to 
be done, — work which must be done, — work 
which it is good to do ; — a place in which 
labor of one kind or another is at once the 
condition of existence and the condition of 
happiness. 

Well, then, in this working-day world of 
ours we must all work. The only question 
is, what shall we do ? To few is it granted 
to choose their work. Indeed, all work worth 
the doing seems to leave us no choice. We 
are called to it. Sometimes the voice so call- 
ing is from within, sometimes from without ; 
but in any case it is what we term expressive- , 
ly our vocation^ and in either case the harmony 



26 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

and happiness of life in man or woman con- 
sists in finding in our vocation the employ- 
ment of our highest faculties, and of as many 
of them as can be brought into action. 

And work is of various kinds : there are 
works of necessity and works of mercy ; — 
head work, hand work ; — man's work, wo- 
man's work; and on the distribution of this 
work in accordance with the divine law, and 
what Milton calls the " faultless proprieties 
of nature," depends the well-being of the 
whole community, not less, than that of each 
individual. 

Domestic life, the acknowledged foundation 
of all social life, has settled by a natural law 
the work of the man and the work of the 
woman. > The man governs, sustains, and 
defends the family ; the woman cherishes, 
reglulates, and purifies it ; but though distinct, 
the relative work is inseparable, — sometimes 
exchanged, sometimes shared ; so that from 
.the beginning, we have, even in the primitive 
household, not the division^ but the communion 
of labor. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 27 

As civilization advances, as the social in- 
terests and occupations become more and 
more complicated, the family duties and influ 
ences diverge from the central home, — in a 
manner, radiate from it, — though it is always 
there in reality. The man becomes on a 
larger scale, father and brother, sustainer and 
defender; the woman becomes on a larger 
scale, mother and sister, nurse and help. 

Of course, the relations thus multiplied and 
diffused are less sacred, less intense, but also 
less egotistical, less individual, than in the 
primitive tent of the Arab, the lodge of the 
red-man, or within the precincts of the civil- 
ized hearth ; but in proportion as we can carry 
out socially the family duties and charities, 
and perform socially the household-work, just 
in such proportion is society safely and har- 
moniously constituted. 

If domestic life be then the foundation and 
the bond of all social communities, does it not 
seem clear that there must exist between man 
and woman, even from the beginning, the 



28 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

communion of love and the communion of 
labor ? By the first I understand all the be- 
nevolent affections and their results, and all 
the binding charities of life, extended from 
the home into the more ample social rela- 
tions ; and in the latter I comprehend all the 
active duties, aM intellectual exercise of the 
faculties, also extended from the central home 
into the larger social circle. When from the 
cross those memorable words were utte):ed by 
our Lord, "Behold thy Mother! Behold thy 
Son ! " do you think they were addressed only 
to the two desolate mourners who then and 
there wept at his feet? No, — they were 
spoken, like all his words, to the wide uni- 
verse, to all humanity, to all time ! 

I rest, therefore, all I have to say hereafter 
upon what I conceive to be a great vital truth, 
— an unchangeable, indisputable, natural law. 
And it is this : that men and women are by 
nature mutually dependent, mutually helpful ; 
that this communion exists not merely in one 
or two relations, which custom may define 
and authorize, and to which opinion may re- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 29 

strict them in this or that class, in this or that 
position; but must extend to every possible 
relation in existence in which the two sexes 
can be socially approximated. Thus, for in- 
stance, a man, in the first place, merely sus- 
tains and defends his home ; then he works to 
sustain and defend the community or the 
nation he belongs to : and so of woman ; she 
begins by being the nurse, the teacher, the 
cherisher of her home, through her greater ten- 
derness and purer moral sentiments ; then she 
uses these qualities and sympathies on a larger 
scale, to cherish and purify society. But still 
the man and the woman must continue to 
share the work ; there must be the communion 
of labor in the large human family just as 
there was within the narrower precincts of 
home. 

You will wonder that I begin with truisms 
such as no man in his senses never thinks of 
disputing; but the wonder is that, while ad- 
mitted, they are never acted upon. Can you 
give me any one instance in which this primal 
law of our being, with regard to the distribu- 

3* 



30 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

tion of work, has been taken as the natural 
and necessary basis for any improvement in 
legislation or in education? Can you point 
to any one among these piles of Blue-books 
and reports, — educational reports, sanitary 
reports, jail reports, juvenile delinquent reports, 
— in which such principles are adverted to ? 
It is granted as a principle that ample scope 
should be given for the man to perform his 
share of the social work^ and ample means of 
instruction to enable him to perform it well. 
What provision is made to enable the woman 
to do her work well and efficiently ? 

It is not charity, nor energy, nor intelligence 
which are wanting in our women, any more 
than dauntless bravery in our men. But 
something is wanting ; or surely from so 
much good material, more positive and ex- 
tended social benefits would arise. What is 
wanting is more moral courage, more com- 
mon sense on the part of our legislators. If 
men were better educated they would sympa- 
thize in the necessity of giving a better educa- 
tion to women. They would perceive the 
wisdom of applying, on a large and efficient 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 31 

scale, the means of health, strength, and prog- 
ress which lie in the gentler capacities of the 
gentler sex, — material ready at hand, as yet 
wasted' in desultory, often misdirected, efforts, 
or perishing inert, or fermenting to evil and 
despair. 

Lying at the source of the mischief we 
trace a great mistake and a great want. 

The great mistake seems to have been that, 
in all our legislation, it is taken for granted 
that the woman is always protected, always 
under tutelage, always within the precincts of 
a home ; finding there her work, her interests, 
her duties, and her happiness : but is this true ? 
We know that it is altogether false. There 
are thousands and thousands of women who 
have no protection, no guide, no help, no 
home; — who are absolutely driven by cir- 
cumstance and necessity, if not by impulse 
and inclination, to carry out into the larger 
community the sympathies, the domestic in- 
stincts, the active administrative capabilities 
with which God has endowed them ; but 



32 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

these instincts, sympathies, capabilities, re- 
quire, first, to . be properly developed, then 
properly trained, and then directed into large 
and useful channels, according to the individ- 
ual tendencies. 

As to the want, what I insist on particularly 
is, that the means do not exist for the training 
of those powers; that the sphere of duties 
which should occupy them is not acknowl- 
edged; and I must express my deep con- 
viction that society is suffering in its depths 
through this great mistake and this great 
want. 

"We require in our country the recognition, 
— the public recognition, — by law as well as 
by opinion, of the woman's privilege to share 
in the communion of labor at her own free 
choice, and the foundation of institutions 
which shall train her to do her work well. 

I am anxious that you should not misun- 
derstand me at the outset with regard to this 
^^ vjoman-questiGn^^^ as it has been called. I 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 33 

have no intention to discuss either the rights 
or the wrongs of women. I think that on this 
question our relations across the Atlantic have 
gone a mile beyond the winning-post, and 
brought discredit and ridicule on that just 
cause which, here in England, prejudice, cus- 
tom, ignorance, have in a manner crushed and 
smothered up. It is in this country, beyond all 
Christian countries, that what has been called, 
quaintly but expressively, the " feminine ele- 
ment of society," considered as a power appli- 
cable in many ways to the amelioration of 
many social evils, has been not only neglected, 
but absolutely ignored by those who govern 
us. The woman cries out for the occasion and 
the means to do well her appointed and per- 
mitted work, to perform worthily her share in 
the natural communion of labor. Because it 
is denied to her she perishes, " and no man 
layeth it to heart." * 

* The soliloquy of the young girl in *' Shirley" is as ex- 
quisitely true to the individual character as it is illustrative 
generally of an outward state of things which shuts down the 
safety-valves on the morbid feeling, until a condition of health 
arising out of natural causes, and which Nature intended to 
be temporary and healable, becomes chronic and permanent : 
— ''Nobody" (she is thinking aloud) ** nobody in particu- 



34 SISTERS OF CHARITY. 

It is true that there is no law which forbids 
the woman to use her energies ; but we might 
as well say that no law exists in China which 
forbids a woman to take a walk into the coun- 

lar is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things 
are; and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle over it, how 
they are to be altered for the better; but I feel there is some- 
thing wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have 
more to do, — better chances of interesting and profitable occu- 
pation than they possess now; and when I speak thus, I have 
no impression that I displease God by my words, that I am 
either impious or impatient, irreligious or sacrilegious. My 
consolation is, indeed, that God hears many a groan, and 
compassionates much grief which man stops his ears against, 
or frowns on with impotent contempt. I say impotent, for I 
observe that to such grievances as society cannot readily cure 
it usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn; this scorn 
being only a sort of tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. 
People hate to be reminded of ills they are unable or unwil- 
ling to remedy; such reminder, in forcing on them a sense of 
their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an obligation 
to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and shakes 
their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless and 
unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupa- 
tion in the world; the demand disturbs the happy and 
rich ; it disturbs parents. Look at the numerous families of 
girls in this neighborhood, — the Armitages, the Birtwhistles, 
the Sykes. The brothers of these girls are every one in busi- 
ness or in professions ; they have something to do : their sis- 
ters have no earthly employment but household work and 
sewing ; no earthly pleasure but an unprofitable visiting ; and 
no hope, in all their life to come, of any thing better. This 
stagnant state of things makes them decline in health; they 
are never well, and their minds and views shrink to wondrous 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 35 

try. The Chinese content themselves with 
bandaging and crippling the feet of their 
women, which is found, as a preventive, quite 
as effectual as any law. In a very entertain- 

narrowness. The great wish, the sole aim, of every one of 
them is to be married ; but the majority will never marry : 
they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they 
dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into 
ridicule; they don't want them; they hold them very cheap; 
they say, — I have heard them say it with sneering laughs 
many a time, — the matrimonial market is overstocked. 
Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters 
when they observe their manoeuvres ; they order them to stay 
at home. What do they expect them to do at home ? If 
you ask, they would answer, sew and cook. They ex- 
pect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, 
uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germs 
of faculties for any thing else; — a doctrine as reason- 
able to hold as it would be that the fathers have no faculties 
but for eating what their daughters cook, or for wearing what 
they sew. Could men live so themselves ? would they not .be 
very weary ? and when there came no relief to their weari- 
ness but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation, would 
not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy ? Lucretia, 
spinning at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solo- 
mon's virtuous woman, are often quoted as patterns of what 
' the sex ' (as they say) ought to be. I don't know : Lucre- 
tia, I dare say, was a most worthy sort of person, but she 
kept her servants up very late. I should not have liked to be 
amongst the number of the maidens. The * virtuous woman,' 
again, had her household up in the very middle of the night. 
Slie 'got breakfast over' before one o'clock, a. m. ; but she 
had something more to do than spin and give out portions. 
She was a manufacturer ; she made fine linen and sold it. 



b6 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

ing book about China, which has lately ap- 
peared, the author, M. Hue, describes some 
Chinese ladies setting off on a pilgrimage. 
Hobbling on their cramped feet, and support- 
She was an agricnltnrist ; she bought estates and planted 
Yinejards. TTiat woman was a manager. She was what the 
matrons hereabonts call ' a cleyer woman.' On the whole, I 
like her a good deal better than Lucretia ; but I don't believe 
either Mr. Armitage or ]^Ir. Svkes could have got the advan- 
tage of her in a bargain; yet I like her: — 'Strength and 
honor were her clothing. The heart of her husband safely 
trusted in her. She opened her mouth with wisdom; in her 
tongue was the law of kindness; her children rose up and 
called her blessed ; her husband also praised her.' King of 
Israel ! your model of a woman is a worthy model ! But are 
we, in these days, brought up to be like her ? Men of Eng- 
land ! do your daughters reach this royal standard ? Can 
they reach it ? Can you help them to reach it ? Can you 
give them a field in which their faculties may be exercised and 
grow? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many 
of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption 
or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, 
— envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert 
to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce 
modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position 
and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. 
Fathers ! cannot you alter these things ? Perhaps not all at 
once ; but consider the matter well when it is brought before 
you : receive it as a theme worthy of thought ; do not dismiss 
it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to 
be proud of your daughters, and not to blush for them. 
Then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall 
raise them above the flii-t, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-mak- 
ing tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. O/ 

ing themselves with a stick, they reach at last 
the temple to which they are bound. So it is 
with our women: they attain their objects; 
but what God made natural, graceful, and 
easy, is rendered matter of pain and difficulty, 
is regarded as an indecorum or an extrava- 
gance, and is very awkwardly and imperfectly 
achieved, if at all. 

Now the problem which it is given to us 
in this age and this country to solve as well 
as we can, — to solve, I will say it, or per- 
ish morally, — has been partially solved by 
another church in other countries. And be- 

— they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace 
to you. Cultivate them, — give them scope and work, — they 
will be your gayest companions in health, your tenderest 
nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop in age." 

I had the opportunity, on different occasions, of showing 
this striking passage to two clever men. One of them listened 
attentively, and then said, with a half-sigh, *' She ought to 
emigrate"! " The other, rather impatiently, and with a half- 
sneer, thus commented, — '* The girl ought to be married ! " 
Marriage and emigration have both their difficulties. And 
must women in this country be driven to one of these two 
alternatives? or resign themselves to become, as some one 
expresses it, the " female of the tutor or the tailor .? " And 
this too when they are needed on every hand, in works of 
necessity or works of mercy ? 
4 



38 SISTERS OF CHARITY 

fore I proceed to consider the subject with 
reference to the present condition of society 
and public opinion among us, let it be per- 
mitted to me to advert briefly to the institu- 
tions of charitable women, in the Roman 
Catholic Church, not because I think or wish 
that these institutions could or ought to be 
carried out among us precisely in the same 
manner, as a purely religious establishment, 
subservient to a hierarchy ; but because I am 
anxious to show you the immense results of a 
well-organized system of work for women. 

I know that many well-meaning, ignorant 
people in this country entertain the idea that 
the existence of communities of women, train- 
ed and organized to help in social work from 
the sentiment of devotion, is especially a Ro- 
man Catholic institution, belonging peculiarly 
to that church, and necessarily implying the 
existence of nuns and nunneries, veils and 
vows, forced celibacy and seclusion, and all 
the other inventions and traditions which, in 
this Protestant nation, are regarded with ter- 
ror, disgust, and derision. I conceive that this 
is altogether a mistake. The truth seems to 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 39 

me to amount to this : that the Roman Cath- 
olic Church has had the good sense to turn to 
account, and assimilate to itself, and inform 
with its own peculiar doctrines, a deep-seated 
principle in our human nature, — a law of life, 
which we Protestants have had the folly to 
repudiate. We admire and reverence the 
beautiful old cathedrals which our Roman 
Catholic ancestors built and endowed. If we 
have not inherited them, we have, at least, ap- 
propriated them and made them ours ; we 
worship God in them, we say our prayers in 
them after our own hearts. Can we not also 
appropriate and turn to account some of the 
institutions they have left us, — inform them 
with a spirit more consonant with our national 
character and the requirements of the age, and 
dedicate them anew to good and holy pur- 
poses ? What prevents us from using Sisters 
of Charity, as well as fine old cathedrals and 
colleges, for pious ends, and as a means of 
social benefit? Are we as stern, as narrow- 
minded, as deficient in real, loving faith as 
were our puritanical forefathers, when they 
not only defaced and desecrated, but would 



40 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

gladly, if they could, have levelled to the earth 
and utterly annihilated those monunfients of 
human genius and human devotion ? Luckily 
they stand in their beauty, to elevate the minds 
and hearts of us, the descendants of those 
who built and dedicated them, and who boast 
that we- have reformed, not destroyed the 
Church of Christ ! — and let me say that these 
institutions of female charity, to which I have 
referred, — institutions which had their source 
in the deep heart of humanity, and in the 
teaching of a religion of love, — let me say 
that these are better and more beautiful and 
more durable than edifices of stone reared by 
men's hands, and worthy to be preserved and 
turned to pious uses, though we can well dis- 
pense with some of those ornaments and ap- 
pendages which speak to us no more. 

It would take far too much time were I" 
to go over the history of the early ages of 
Christendom, and show you that women, as- 
sociated under the ruling civil and ecclesiasti- 
cal powers, were then officially, but voluntarily, 
employed in works of social good. That these 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



41 



women should have been early associated with 
the church, and held their duties by ecclesias- 
tical appointment, was natural and necessary, 
because all moral sway, and all moral influ- 
ence, and all education, and every peaceful 
and elevating pursuit, belonged, for many cen- 
turies, to the ecclesiastical order only. The 
singular and beneficent power exercised by 
the religious and charitable w^omen in these 
times is remarked by all writers, though none 
of them refer it to a natural law, — a great 
first cause. The whole of the early history of 
Christianity is full of examples. I will give 
you one which, on looking over these authori- 
ties, struck me vividly. 

Paula, a noble Roman lady, a lineal de- 
scendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi, is 
mentioned among the first Christian women 
remarkable for their active benevolence. In 
the year 385 she quitted Rome, then still a 
Pagan city ; with the remains of a large for- 
tune, which had been expended in aiding and 
instructing a wretched and demoralized peo- 
ple, and, accompanied by her daughter, she 
4* 



42 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

sailed for Palestine, and took up her residence 
in Bethlehem of Judea. There, as the story 
relates, she assembled round her a community 
of women " as well of noble estate as of mid- 
dle and low lineage." They took no vows, 
they made no profession, but spent their days 
in prayer and good works, having especially 
a well-ordered hospital for the sick. 

In the old English translation of her life 
there is a picture of this charitable lady which 
I cannot refrain from quoting : " She was 
marvellous debonair, and piteous to them that 
were sick, and comforted them, and served 
them right humbly ; and gave them largely to 
eat such as they asked ; but to herself she was 
hard in her sickness and scarce, for she refused 
to eat flesh how well she gave it to others, and 
also to drink wine. She was oft by them that 
were sick, and she laid the pillows aright and 
in point ; and she rubbed their feet, and boiled 
water to wash them ; and it seemed to her 
that the less she did to the sick in service, so 
much the less service did she to God, and 
deserved the less mercy ; therefore she was to 
them piteous and nothing to herself." 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 43 

This picture, drawn fifteen hundred years 
ago, so quaintly graphic, and yet so touching 
in its simplicity, will, perhaps, bring before 
the mind's eye of those who listen to me, 
scenes of the same kind, scenes now enacting 
in the far, far East, where female ministry 
has been called upon to do like offices of 
mercy; — to wash the wounds and smooth 
the couch, and " lay the pillow aright," of the 
maimed, the war-broken, the plague-stricken 
soldier. But we must for awhile turn back 
to the past. 

It is in the seventh century that we find 
these commuities of charitable women first 
mentioned under a particular appellation. 
"We read in history that when Landry, 
Bishop of Paris, about the year 650, founded 
a hospital, since known as the Hotel Dieu, 
as a general refuge for disease and misery, 
he placed it under the direction of the Hospi- 
talieres, or nursing-sisters of that time, — 
women whose services are understood to have 
been voluntary, and undertaken from motives 
of piety. Innocent IV., who would not allow 



44 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

of any outlying religious societies, collected 
and united these hospital-sisters under the 
rule of the Augustine Order, making them 
amenable to the government and discipline of 
the Church. The novitiate or training of a 
Sodur Hospitaliere was of twelve years' dura- 
tion, after which she was allowed to make 
her profession. At that time, and even earlier, 
we find many hospitals expressly founded for 
the reception of the sick pilgrims and wounded 
soldiers returning from the East, and bringing 
with them strange and hitherto unknown 
forms of disease and suffering. Some of 
the largest hospitals in France and the Neth- 
erlands originated in this purpose, and were 
all served by the Hospitalieres ; and to this 
day the Hotel Dieu, with its one thousand 
beds, the hospital of St. Louis, with its seven 
hundred beds, and that of La Pitie, with its 
six hundred beds, are served by the same 
sisterhood, under whose care they were origi- 
nally placed centuries ago. 

For about five hundred years the institution 
of the Dames, or Sosurs Hospitalieres, remained 
the only one of its kind. During this period 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 45 

it had greatly increased its numbers, and ex- 
tended all through western Christendom ; still 
it did not suffice for the wants of the age ; 
and the thirteenth century, fruitful in all those 
results which a combination of wide-spread 
suffering and religious ferment naturally pro- 
duces, saw the rise of another community of 
compassionate women destined to exercise a 
far wider influence. These were the Sceurs 
Grises, or Grey Sisters, so called at first, from 
the original color of their dress. Their origin 
was this : — the Franciscans (and other reg- 
ular orders) admitted into their community 
a third or secular class, who did not seclude 
themselves in cloisters, who took no vows of 
celibacy, but were simply bound to submit 
to certain rules and regulations, and united 
together in works of charity, devoting them- 
selves to visiting the sick in the hospitals or 
at their own homes, and doiiig good where- 
ever and whenever called upon. Women of 
all classes were enrolled in this sisterhood. 
Queens, princesses, ladies of rank, wives of 
burghers, as well as poor widows and maid- 
ens. The higher class and the married women 



46 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

occasionally served; the widows and unmar- 
ried devoted themselves almost entirely to the 
duties of nursing the sick in the hospitals. 
Gradually it became a vocation apart, and 
a novitiate or training of from one to three 
years was required to fit them for their pro- 
fession. 

The origin of the Beguines, so well known 
in Flanders, is uncertain ; but they seem to 
have existed as hospital-sisters in the seventh 
century, and to have been settled in commu- 
nities at Liege and elsewhere in 1173. They 
wear a particular dress, (the black gown, and 
white hood,) but take no vows, and may leave 
the community at any time, — a thing which 
rarely happens. 

No one who has travelled in Flanders, vis- 
ited Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, or indeed any of 
the Netherlandish towns, will forget the sin- 
gular appearance of these, sometimes young 
and handsome, but always staid, respectable- 
looking women, walking about protected by 
the universal reverence of the people, and 
busied in their compassionate vocation. In 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 47 

their few moments of leisure the Begnines 
are allowed to make lace and cultivate flow- 
ers, and they act under a strict self-constituted 
government, maintained by strict traditional 
forms. All the hospitals in Flanders are 
served by these Beguines. They have be- 
sides, attached to their houses, hospitals of 
their own, with a medical staff of physicians 
and surgeons, under whose direction, in all 
cases of difficulty, the sisters administer re- 
lief; and of the humility, skill, and tenderness 
with which they do administer it, I have never 
heard but one opinion ; * nor did I ever meet 
with any one who had travelled in those 

* Howard mentions them with due praise, as serving in 
their hospital at Bruges. " There are twenty of them ; they 
look yery healthy ; they rise at four, and are constantly em- 
ployed about their numerous patients." '' They prepare as 
well as administer the medicines. The Directress of the 
Pharmacy last year celebrated her jubilee or fiftieth year of 
her residence in the hospital." (P. 149.) 

A recent traveller mentions their hospital of St. John at 
Bruges as one of the best conducted he had ever met with. 
"Its attendants, in their religious costume and with their 
nuns' head-dresses, moving about with a quiet tenderness and 
solicitude, worthy their name as * Sisters of Charity ; ' and 
the lofty wards, with the white linen of the beds, present in 
every particular an exauiplc of the most accurate neatness 
and cleanliness. 



4S SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

countries who did not wish that some system 
of the kind could be transfen'ed to England. 

In the fifteenth century (about 1443), when 
Flanders was under the dominion of the 
Dukes of BursTindv. a few of the Besiiines 
were summoned from Bruges to Beaune to 
take charge of the great hospital founded 
there by Eollin, the Chancellor of Philip the 
Good. They were soon joined by others from 
the neighboring districts, and this community 
of nurses obtained the name of S{eiirs de Ste* 
MartJiej Sisters of St. INIartha. It is worth 
notice that Martha, who is represented in 
Scripture as troubled about household cares 
while her sister Mary •• sat at the feet of Jesus, 
and heard his words," was early chosen as the 
patroness of those who, instead of devoting 
themselves to a cloistered life of prayer and 
contemplation, were bound by a religious 
obligation to active secular duties. The hos- 
pital of Beaune, one of the most extensive 
and best managed in France, is still served by 
these sisters. ^Nlany hospitals in the South of 
France, and three at Paris, are served by the 
same community. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 49 

In Germany, the Sisters of Charity are 
styled " Sisters of St. Elizabeth," in honor of 
that benevolent enthusiast, Elizabeth of Hun- 
gary, whose pathetic story and beautiful le- 
gend have been rendered familiar to us by Mr. 
Kingsley's drama. When Joseph II. sup- 
pressed the nunneries throughout Austria and 
Flanders, the Elizabethan Sisters, as well as 
the Beguines, were excepted by an especial 
decree, " because of the usefulness of their 
vocation." At Vienna, a few years ago, I had 
the opportunity, through the kindness of a 
distinguished physician, of visiting one of the 
houses of these Elizabethan Sisters. There 
was an hospital attached to it of fifty beds, 
which had received about four hundred and 
fifty patients during the year. Nothing could 
exceed the propriety, order, and cleanliness of 
the whole establishment. On the ground-floor 
was an extensive " Pharmacie," a sort of 
Apothecaries' Hall ; part of this was divided 
off by a long table or counter, and surrounded 
by shelves filled with drugs, much like an 
apothecary's shop; behind the counter two 
Sisters, with their sleeves tucked up, were 



50 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

busy weighing and compounding medicines, 
with such a delicacy, neatness, and exactitude 
as women use in these matters. On the out- 
side of this counter, seated on benches or 
standing, were a number of sick and infirm, 
pale, dirty, ragged patients ; and among them 
moved two other Sisters, speaking to each in- 
dividually in a low gentle voice, and with a 
quiet authority of manner, that in itself had 
something tranquillizing. A physician and 
surgeon, appointed by the Government, visited 
this hospital, and were resorted to in cases of 
difficulty, or where operations were necessary. 
Here was another instance in which men and 
women worked together harmoniously and 
efficiently. Howard, in describing the princi- 
pal hospital at Lyons, which he praises for its 
excellent and kindly management, as being 
" so clean and so quiet," tells us that at that 
time (1776), he found it attended by nine phy- 
sicians and surgeons, and managed by twelve 
Sisters of Charity. " There were Sisters who 
made up, as well as administered, all the medi- 
cines prescribed ; for which purpose there was 
a laboratory and apothecary's shop, the neatest 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 51 

and most elegantly fitted up that can be con- 
ceived." * 

I must notice, with due respect and admira- 
tion, another female community, also espe- 
cially excepted by an Imperial decree when 
other religious orders were suppressed, and for 
the same reason ; — the Ursulines. We may 
smile at the childish and melancholy legend 
of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, 
and at the skulls heaped up in a certain 
mouldy tawdry chapel at Cologne; but of 
the Ursulines, as a community, we may be 
allowed to think seriously and even reverently. 
Their peculiar vocation was the care and 
instruction of poor children. They had their 
infant and ragged schools long before we had 
thought of them. Even from time immemo- 
rial there had existed, as we have seen, numer- 
ous communities of women to nurse and to 
pray; and there were isolated instances of 

* Howard also mentions the hospitals belonging to the order 
of Charity, in all countries, as the best regulated, the clean- 
est, the most tenderly served and managed of all he had met 
■with. He mentions the introduction of iron bedsteads into 
one of their hospitals as something new to him. (In 1776.) 



52 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

women in the higher ranks extraordinarily- 
pious and learned; but a community espe. 
cially to take charge of children, to teach, to 
educate, and prepare and train teachers, was 
not known in Christendom till the institution 
of the Ursuline Sisters in 1537 : this originated 
in Brescia. Angela da Brescia, a woman of 
birth and fortune, lost at an early age and in a 
painful manner, a young sister, to whom she 
was tenderly attached. At first her sorrow 
took refuge in prayer, seclusion, and pilgri- 
mages, after the fashion of that time. It then 
took another form, and for the sake of the lost 
sister she devoted herself to the charitable 
work of collecting and educating poor female 
children. 

It is touching, it is sadly significant, to see 
how often the beneficent tendencies of women 
have, when acted out, taken their especial form 
from some deep domestic sorrow, or some 
strong bias of the affections. I could men- 
tion several examples I have known, where 
love or grief has thus modified the element of 
charity. 

The institution of Angela da Brescia was 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 53 

the first of its kind; and so unheard of at this 
time was the attempt of women to organize a 
systematic education for their own sex, that 
when Fran^oise de Saintonge undertook to 
found such an establishment at Dijon, she 
was hooted in the streets, and her father called 
together four doctors learned in the law, " pour 
s^ assurer quHnstruire desfemmes n^etait pas un 
(Buvre du demonP Even after he had given 
his consent, he was afraid to countenance his 
daughter; and Fran^oise, unprotected, unaid- 
ed, began her first community of Ursulines in 
a garret with five poor children. Twelve 
years afterwards she was almost carried in 
triumph through the streets of Dijon, bells 
ringing, flowers strewed in her path. She had 
succeeded, and the Church took her under 
its wing; and with that far-sighted wisdom 
which Mr. Macaulay has pointed out as so 
characteristic, at once appropriated her and 
her good works. 

These educational institutions multiplied 
during the next two hundred years, that is, 
down to the middle of the last century. The 
5 



54 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

Ursuline Sisters behaved admirably during 
the French Revolution, and though dispersed 
and their houses suppressed, they followed 
their vocation, and by collecting and teaching 
the poor orphans of massacred parents, and 
assisting the village Cures, they prevented a 
mass of evil. As soon as order was restored 
they were reinstated, but their establishments 
have not since increased in number. The ex- 
tension of secular schools in France and Ger- 
many, and the popularity of the Sisters of 
Mercy, who unite the educational duties of 
the Ursulines with those of the Hospitalieres, 
have in some degree superseded them. I 
have, however, visited several of the Ursuline 
houses; and I remember one in particular 
which I visited five-and-twenty years ago. 
To reach the school, where more than three 
hundred children were assembled, I had to 
pass through a room in which about sixty in- 
fants were lying in cradles or on mattresses, 
while two of the Sisterhood were going about 
with pap, and stilling as well as they could the 
incessant whimpering and squealing; — it was 
an absurd and yet a pathetic scene. These 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 55 

were babies left by poor women who had gone 
to their daily work, and were to return for 
them in the afternoon ; and this plan has since 
been imitated in the admirable charity of 
" Les Creches^^ instituted at Paris, and similar 
charities in this country. 

Now I do not say that the education given 
by those good Sisters was the best possible, — 
far from it. It did not go much beyond the 
a, b, c, the Catechism, and a little needle- 
work, but it was not worse than that which 
many of our dame schools afforded fifty years 
ago ; and it established as a principle that 
women might be permitted to teach as well 
as to learn ; — a principle so familiar to us in 
these days, that we quite forget to look back 
to a period when it was a strange, unheard-of 
novelty, and had to do battle against preju- 
dices, both of the clergy and the people. 

It can easily be imagined that institutions 
like these, composed of such various ingredi- 
ents, spread over such various countries and 
over several centuries of time, should have 
been subject to the influences of time ; though 



56 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

from a deep-seated principle of vitality and 
necessity they seem to have escaped its vicis- 
situdes, for they did not change in character 
or pm'pose, far less perish. That in ages of 
superstition they should have been supersti- 
tious, that in ages of ignorance they should 
have been ignorant, — debased in evil selfish 
times, by some alloy of selfishness and cupid- 
ity, — in all this there is nothing to surprise 
us ; but one thing does seem remarkable. 
While the men who professed the healing art 
were generally astrologers and alchymists, 
dealing in charms and nativities, — lost in 
dreams of the Elixir Vitae and the Philoso- 
pher's Stone, and in such mummeries and 
quackeries as made them favorite subjects for 
comedy and satire, — these simple Sisters, in 
their hospitals, were accumulating a vast fund 
of practical and traditional knowledge in the 
treatment of disease, and the uses of various 
remedies; — knovvledge which was turned to 
account and condensed into rational theory 
and sound method, when in the sixteenth cen- 
tury Surgery and Medicine first rose to the 
rank of experimental sciences, and were studied 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 57 

as such. The poor Hospitalieres knew noth- 
ing of Galen and Hippocrates, but they could 
observe if they could not describe, and pre- 
scribe, if they could not demonstrate. Still, 
in the course of time great abuses had cer- 
tainly crept into these religious societies,— 
not so bad or so flagrant, perhaps, as those 
which disgraced within a recent period many 
of our own incorporated charities, — but bad 
enough, and vitiating, if not destroying, their 
power to do good. The funds were some- 
times misappropriated, the novices ill-trained 
for their work, the superiors careless, the 
Sisters mutinous, the treatment of the sick re- 
mained rude and empirical. Women of sense 
and feeling, who wished to enrol themselves 
in these communities, were shocked and dis- 
couraged by such a state of things. A reform 
became absolutely necessary. 

This was brought about, and very effec- 
tually, about the middle of the seventeenth 
century. 

Louise de Marillac, — better known as Ma- 
dame Legras, when left a widow in the prime 
of life, could find, like Angela da Brescia, no 



58 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

better refuge from sorrow than in active du- 
ties, undertaken " for the love of God." She 
desired to join the Hospitalieres, and was met 
at the outset by difficulties, and even horrors, 
which would have extinguished a less ardent 
vocation, a less determined will. She set her- 
self to remedy the evils, instead of shrinking 
from them. She was assisted and encouraged 
in her good work by a man endued with great 
ability and piety, enthusiasm equal, and moral 
influence even superior, to her own. This 
was the famous Vincent de Paul, who had 
been occupied for years with a scheme to re- 
form thoroughly the prisons and the hospitals 
of France. In Madame Legras he found a 
most efficient coadjutor. With her charitable 
impulses and religions enthusiasm, she united 
qualities not always, not often, found in union 
with them : a calm and patient temperament, 
and that administrative faculty, indispensable 
in those who are called to such privileged 
work. She was particularly distinguished by 
a power of selecting and preparing the instru- 
ments, and combining the means, through 
which she was to carry out her admirable pur- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 59 

pose. With Vincent de Paul and Madame 
Legras was associated another person, Ma- 
dame Goussaut, who besieged the Archbishop 
of Paris till what was refused to reason was 
granted to importunity, and they were per- 
mitted to introduce various improvements into 
the administration of the hospitals. Vincent 
de Paul and Louise Legras succeeded at last 
in constituting, not on a new, but on a reno- 
vated basis, the order of Hospitalieres, since 
known as the Sisterhood of Charity. A lower 
class of Sisters were trained to act under the 
direction of the more intelligent and educated 
women. Within twenty years this new com- 
munity had two hundred houses and hospi- 
tals ; in a few years more it had spread over 
all Europe. Madame Legras died in 1660. 
Already before her death the women prepared 
and trained under her instructions, and under 
the direction of Vincent de Paul (and here we 
have another instance of the successful com- 
munion of labor), had proved their efficiency 
on some extraordinary occasions. In the cam- 
paigns of 1652 and 1658 they were sent to 
the field of battle, in groups of two and four 



60 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

together, to assist the T^'omided. They were 
invited into the besieged towns to take charge 
of the military hospitals. They were particu- 
larly conspicuous at the siege of Dunkirk, and 
in the military hospitals established by Anne 
of Austria at Fontainebleau. AYhen the plague 
broke out in Poland in 1672, they were sent to 
direct the hospitals at Warsaw, and to take 
charge of the orphans, and were thus intro- 
duced into Eastern Europe; and, stranger 
than all! they were even sent to the prison- 
infirmaries where the hrsiiided forgats and con- 
demned felons lay cursing and \\Tithing in 
their fetters. This was a mission for Sisters 
of Charity which may startle the refined, or 
confined, notions of Englishwomen in the 
nineteenth century. It is not, I believe, gen- 
erally known in this country that the same 
experiment has been lately tried, and with 
success, in the prisons of Piedmont, where the 
Sisters were first employed to nm'se the 
wretched criminals perishing with disease and 
despair ; afterwards, and during convalescence, 
to read to them, to teach them to read and to 
knit, and in some cases to sing. The hardest 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 61 

of these wretches had probably some remem- 
brance of a mother's voice and look thus re- 
called, or he could at least feel gratitude for 
sympathy from a purer, higher nature. As an 
element of reformation, I might almost say of 
regeneration, this use of the feminine influ- 
ence has been found efficient where all other 
means had failed.- 

Howard, — well named the Good, — when 
inquiring into the state of prisons, about the 
middle of the last century, found many of 
those in France, bad as they generally were, 
far superior to those in our own country ; and 
he attributes it to the employment and inter- 
vention of women " in a manner," he says, 
"which had no parallel in England." In 
Paris, he tells us, there were religious women 
" authorized to take care that the sick prison- 
ers were properly attended to ; and who fur- 
nished the felons in the dungeons with clean 
linen and medicine, and performed kind offices 
to the prisoners in general." " The provincial 
jails, also, have charitable patronesses, who 
take care that the prisoners be not defrauded 
6 



62 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

of their allowance, and procure them farther 
relief." This, you will observe, was at a pe- 
riod when in England felons, debtors, and 
untried prisoners were dying by inches of filth 
and disease and despair. No doubt we have 
much improved since then, but not so much 
as we ought to have done. 

A living writer observes that ''it is aston- 
ishing and mortifying to consider how little 
progress the British legislature has made 
beyond adopting tardily, partially, and in a 
vacillating spirit, the improvements suggested 
seventy-nine years ago by Howard."* The 
striking remarks and suggestions in respect to 
the influence of women in some of the hospi- 
tals and prisons abroad, which abound in 
Howard's works, do not seem to have been 
noticed or taken into account at all, — not 
even by the author of the excellent treatise 
from which I quote. 

It appears to be substantiated by the united 
testimony of some of the greatest medical 
authorities among us, — by such men as Bro- 
die, Clark, Holland, Owen, Forbes, Conolly, 

* Combe ^'On the Principles of Criminal Legislation,^^ &c. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 63 

and Carpenter, — prefixed to the above-named 
treatise, that " criminal legislation and prison 
discipline will never attain to a scientific, con- 
sistent, practical, and efficient character, until 
they have become based on physiology of the 
brain and nervous system ; " or, as it is else- 
whree expressed, ^' while the influence of or- 
ganism on the dispositions and capacities of 
men continues to be ignored." Then have 
we not to consider, as the next step, what is to 
influence the organism? Have we not to 
consider whether there may not exist organic 
influences arising out of contrasted yet harmo- 
nious organisms, — mutual influences which 
God has contemplated in those sacred and 
universal relations which bind his creation 
together, and which we ought reverently to 
use for good, instead of allowing pernicious 
quacks ' and sensualists most irreligiously to 
misuse and abuse for evil ? 

It is difficult to believe in " invincible per- 
tinacity in evil." Nevertheless, it does seem 
that there are some few miserable creatures 
who are, in respect to the moral organization, 
what idiots are in respect to intellect. We 



64 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

know, however, that a large proportion of the 
convicts in our prisons, and the sick in our 
hospitals, and the outcasts in our workhouses, 
are unhappy beings, who have never been 
brought into contact with goodness elevated 
by the religious principle, softened by the 
spirit of love, and refined by habitual gentle- 
ness and modesty; and we seem in these 
matters to be in such constant fear of doing 
mischief, that we have no courage to do good. 
We stand in such a dastardly terror of the 
ridicule which follows mistake or failure, that 
we ought to die of inward shame, wliUe thus 
entrenching ourselves in the negative good, 
instead of bravely meeting the positive evil. 
The hardest tiling which visitors of prisons 
have to contend with in the wretched delin- 
quents, is not so much the propensity to evil 
as the ignorance of, and disbelief in', goodness ; 
on men of this stamp and on young offenders, 
judicious female influence would probably 
have effect v^'here men in authority, though 
not less well intentioned and equally judicious, 
arouse only feelings of suspicion, sullenness, 
and resistance. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 65 

From recent inquiries I learn that the sys- 
tem of employing Sisters of Charity as visitors 
in the prisons of Piedmont continues to work 
well, and that none of the evils which might 
have been apprehended have in any instance 
occurred.* But supposing they had occurred ; 
a hundred mistakes and failures at the outset 
could not invalidate the principle that what 
had once succeeded on a large scale would, 
under similar conditions, again succeed : that 
the expedient of bringing the female mind and 
temperament to bear on the masculine brain, 
(and of course vice versa,) as a physical and 
moral resource, might be worth a thought, 
being in accordance with that law of nature 
or Divine ordinance which placed the two 
sexes under mutual and sympathetic influ- 
ences; not always, as the stupid and profli- 
gate suppose, for evil and temptation, but for 
good and for healing : not in one or two re- 
lations of life, but in every possible relation 

* While these sheets are going through the press, I learn 
that JDy a recent decree of the Piedmontese Chamber of Dep- 
uties all the conventual religious orders and monasteries in 
Piedmont are to be suppressed, but from this decree the active 
Sisterhoods of Charity are excepted. 
6* 



66 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

in which they can be approximated. This 
suggestion I merely throw out here as not 
unworthy of the consideration of our physi- 
cians, moralists, and legislators. I leave it to 
them and to time, and I proceed. 

At the commencement of the French Revo- 
lution the Sisterhood of Charity had four hun- 
dred and twenty-six houses in France, and 
many more in other countries; the whole 
number of women then actively employed 
was about six thousand. During the Reign 
of Terror, the Superior (Mdlle. Duleau), who 
had become a Sister of Charity at the age of 
nineteen, and was now sixty, endeavored to 
keep the society together, although suppressed 
by the Government ; and in the midst of the 
horrors of that time, — when so many nuns 
and ecclesiastics perished miserably, — it ap- 
pears that the feeling of the people protected 
these women, and I do not learn that any of 
them suffered public or personal outrage. As 
soon as the Consular government was estab- 
lished, the indispensable Sisterhood was re- 
called by a decree of the Minister of the 
Interior. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 67 

I cannot resist giving you a few passages 
from the preamble to this edict, — certainly- 
very striking and significant, — as I find it 
quoted in a little book on " Hospitals and Sis- 
terhoods" now before me. 

It begins thus : — 

" Seeing that the services rendered to the 
sick can only be properly administered by 
those whose vocation it is, and who do it in 
the spirit of love ; — 

" Seeing, farther, that among the hospitals 
of the Republic those are in all ways best 
served wherein the female attendants have 
adhered to the noble example of their prede- 
cessors, whose only object was to practise a 
boundless love and charity ; — 

"Seeing that the members still existing of 
this society are now growing old, so that there 
is reason to fear that an order which is a glory 
to the country may shortly become extinct ; — 

" It is decreed that the Citoyenne Duleau, 
formerly Superior of the Sisters of Charity, is 
authorized to educate girls for the care of the 
hospitals," &c. 

I confess I should like to see an act of our 



68 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

parliament beginning with such a preamble! 
I confess I should like to see an act of our 
parliament beginning with a recognition that 
women do exist as a part of the community, 
whose responsibilities are to be acknowledged, 
and whose capabilities are to be made availa- 
ble, not separately, but conjointly with those 
of men. For that surely must be a defective 
legislation which takes for granted only the 
crimes, the vices, the mistakes of humanity, 
and makes no account of its virtues, its affec- 
tions, and its capabilities. 

Previous to the Revolution, the chief mili- 
tary hospitals and the naval hospitals at Brest, 
Saint- Malo, and Cherbourg, had been placed 
under the management of the Sisters of Char- 
ity. During the Reign of Terror, those Sisters 
who refused to quit their habit and religious 
bond were expelled ; but as soon as order was 
restored, they were recalled by the naval and 
military authorities, and returned to their 
respective hospitals, where their reappearance 
was hailed with rejoicing, and even with tears. 
At present the naval hospitals at Toulon and 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 69 

Marseilles, in addition to those I have men- 
tioned, are served, by these women, acting 
with^ as well as under ^ authority. 

The whole number of women included in 
these charitable orders was, in the year 1848, 
at least, twelve thousand. They seem to have 
a quite marvellous ubiquity. I have myself 
met with them not only at Paris, Vienna, Mi- 
lan, Turin, Genoa, but at Montreal, Quebec, 
and Detroit ; on the conj&nes of civilization ; in 
Ireland, where cholera and famine were raging. 
Everywhere, from the uniform dress and 
a certain similarity in the placid expression 
and quiet deportment, looking so like each 
other, that they seemed, whenever I met 
them, to be but a multiplication of one and 
the same person. In all the well-trained 
Sisters of Charity I have known, whether 
Protestant or Roman Catholic, I have found a 
mingled bravery and tenderness, if not by 
nature, by habit ; and a certain tranquil self- 
complacency, arising, not from self-applause, 
but out of that very abnegation of self which 
had been adopted as the rule of life.* 

* " A letter from the Piroeus, dated the 27th of November, 
says, — * The cholera is at this moment raging at Athens with 



70 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

I have now given you a rapid and most im- 
perfect sketch of what has been done by an 
organized system of charity in the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

I am no friend to nunneries. I do not like 
even the idea of Protestant nunneries, which I 
have heard discussed and warmly advocated. 
I conceive that any large number of women 
shut up together in one locality, with no occu- 
pation connecting them actively and benevo- 
lently with the world of humanity outside, 
with all their interests centred within their 
walls, would not mend each other, and that 
such an atmosphere could not be perfectly 
healthy, spiritually, morally, or physically. 
There would necessarily ensue, in lighter char- 
acters, frivolity, idleness, and sick disordered 
fancies ; and in superior minds, ascetic pride, 
gloom, and impatience. But it is very differ- 
ent with the active orders, and I should cer- 

great violence. The inhabitants, who had begun to return to 
the capital, are again flying in all directions. The Sisters of 
Charity have spontaneously offered to take care of the sick, 
and the religious prejudices of the country have yielded 
before the admitted capacity of the Sisterhood in all that con- 
cerns the treatment of the sick, and before the gentle influ- 
ence which they exercise wheresoever they pass.' " {Times ^ 
Dec. 15, 1854.) 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 71 

tainly like to see amongst us some institutions 
which, if not exactly like them, should supply 
their place. 

In speaking on the subject with intelligent 
and experienced men and women, I have gen- 
erally met with the strongest sympathy ; but 
sometimes also with the vague, sweeping ob- 
jection, that such communities are quite con- 
trary to the spirit of the Reformed Church, 
and among Protestants quite impracticable. 
The worse for us, if it were true ; but is it 
true ? 

The experiment has been tried, an attempt 
has been made, to found such an institution in 
a Protestant community, though not in this 
country ; it has not yet stood the test of cen- 
turies, but let us see what has been done with- 
in a period of thirty years. 

At Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, a small town 
near Dusseldorf, a manufactory had been estab- 
lished during the last war, in which the work- 
men employed were almost all Protestants. 
In 1822 the manufacturer became bankrupt, 



72 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

and the workmen were reduced to poverty. 
Their pastor, Mr. Fliedner, then a very young 
man, travelled through Holland and England 
to collect from sympathizing friends the 
necessary funds to support a church in his 
small parish. In this, we are told, he fully 
succeeded, and, it is added, "this was the 
smallest part of the result of his journey." 
While in England he became acquainted with 
Mrs. Fry. It was the meeting of two most 
congenial minds, and his attention was at 
once turned to the objects which then occupied 
her. On his return home he originated at 
Dusseldorf the first society in Germany for the 
improvement of prison discipline. Experience 
in prisons pointed out to him some ways ot 
doing good which came within his then small 
means. He had been struck with compassion 
for the desolate condition of women who, 
when discharged from prison, already deprav- 
ed by bad habits and without the means of 
subsistence, " are in a ms^nner forced h^ck into 
crime." With one female criminal, and one 
voluntary assistant, he founded his peniten- 
tiary in a little summer-house in his garden. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 73 

This was in 1833. In the following year he 
met with a second volunteer assistant, and 
collected together nine more penitents, of 
whom eight had been more than once in 
prison. This part of the institution, memor- 
able as the first beginning of an establishment, 
which has since extended to so many and 
various branches, has always been kept en- 
tirely separate from the rest. A general hos- 
pital, a lunatic asylum, an orphan asylum, an 
infant school, became so many seminaries for 
training hospital nurses, teachers (z. e, instruct- 
ing Sisters), and visitors of the poor (called 
parish deaconesses). On these I do not dwell 
at present, for we must confine ourselves to the 
theme in hand. It is the hospital at Kaisers- 
werth which constitutes the most important 
part of the establishment, and is likely to be 
the most extensive and permanent in its 
effects^ 

In 1836 Mr. Fliedner established his hospital 
in the deserted manufactory. He had been 
led to think of it partly from the want of good 
nurses for the sick ; partly from regret, as he 
said himself, to see " how much good female 
7 



74 SISTERS OF CHARITY 



power was wasted ; " partly from a perception 
that the women who had voluntarily come 
forward to assist him requned a larger sphere 
for the exercise of their faculties. He began, 
as usual, humbly enough, — with one patient 
and one nurse. Within the first year the 
number of voluntary nurses was seven, and 
the number of patients received and nursed 
was sixty, besides twenty-eight nursed at their 
own houses. The hospital contained in 1854, 
one hundred and twenty beds, which were 
generally full, and more than six thousand 
patients have been received since its com- 
mencement. 

But the chief purpose of this hospital is to 
serve as a training-school for nursing Sisters. 
Every one who offers herself (and there is no 
want of offers) is taken on trial for six months, 
during which she must pay for her board, and 
wears no distinctive dress. If she persists in 
her vocation and is accepted, she undergoes a 
further probation (like the novitiate of the 
Roman Catholic Sisters) of from one to three 
years. She then puts on the hospital dress, 
and is boarded and lodged gratis. The male - 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 75 

wards are served by men-nurses, of whom 
there are five, who have been educated in the 
hospital, and are under the authority of the 
Sisters. They sleep in the male wards, and sit 
up in ease of need. It is added, that " the 
most fastidious could find nothing to object to 
in the intercourse which takes place between 
patients, surgeon, and Sisters." 

As no inducement is offered to these Pro- 
testant Sisters any more than in the Catholic 
Orders, no prospect of pecuniary reward, or 
praise or reputation, nothing, in short, but the 
opportunity of working for the sake of God 
and humanity, so, if this does not appear suffi- 
cient for them, they are dismissed. After they 
have been accepted and made their profession, 
they receive yearly a small sum for clothing, 
and nothing more ; they can receive no fee or 
reward from those they serve, but in age or 
illness the parent institution is bound to re- 
ceive and provide for them. 

A certain number of these Sisters obtain a 
particular education to fit them for parish 
visitors. The absolute necessity that women 
should be especially trained in order to make 



76 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

good and efficient parish visitors is apparent ; 
for it is wonderfully and often pathetically 
absurd to see with what a large stock of good- 
ness and conscientious anxiety, and what a 
small stock of experience, knowledge, and 
sympathy with their objects, some excellent 
women set off on their task as lady visitors of 
the poor. A number of the Sisters, trained 
properly, have been sent to distant towns and 
villages, at the request of clergymen and visit- 
ing -societies. Others are occupied in nursing 
in private families, their services being repaid 
to the parent institution. The excellent Mr. 
Fliedner and his wife still conduct it, and 
receive their best reward, had they sought any, 
in the success of their undertaking. There 
are at present on the establishment one hun- 
dred and ninety Sisters, of whom sixty-two 
are still probationers or learners. Of the Hos- 
pital Sisters, eighty are stationed in different 
hospitals in Germany ; five in London ; three 
at Constantinople (they are probably by this 
time at Scutari) ; five at Jerusalem ; two at 
Smyrna, and two at Pittsburg, in the United 
States; — making in all, ninety-seven women' 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 77 

properly trained and educated, and fully em- 
ployed in their beneficent vocation. 

Let me add, for it is a matter of interest at 
present, that Miss Florence Nightingale went 
through a regular course of training at Kais- 
erswerth, before she took charge of the Female 
Sanitarium in London. 

In imitation of Mr. Fliedner's establishment, 
a similar institution for the training of Protest- 
ant nurses and teachers has been opened at 
Paris ; another at Strasbourg ; another at Ber- 
lin, under the especial protection of the Queen 
of Prussia, and under the direction of the 
Baroness Rantzau, who had previously gone 
through a complete course of instruction and 
experience at Kaiserswerth. The number of 
nursing Sisters in the Berlin hospital is twenty- 
eight, and there are twelve probationers. A 
similar establishment was founded at Dresden 
by the late excellent and amiable Countess 
Alfred Hohenthal {nee Princess Biron), in 
which twenty-one women are under a course 



7* 



78 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

of instruction. There are besides ten other 
institutions, which I find described as existing 
in different localities, but all emanating from 
the same origin, and containing altogether not 
less than four hundred and twenty-nine mem- 
bers. So that it seems no longer a question 
as to whether, in Protestant communities, a 
number of women can be properly trained and 
organized for purposes of social benefit, au- 
thorized and employed by the Government, 
aided and dh*ected by intelligent and good 
men, and sustained by public opinion. I con- 
sider that the question has been answered ; 
and I must repeat my strong conviction, that 
such a communion of labor and of love, as I 
have endeavored to describe, is not a thing of 
country, creed, or custom, but is founded in 
the very laws of our being ; — in that self-same 
law which is the basis of domestic life; that it 
is one of the main conditions of social happi- 
ness and morals ; and that the neglect of it in 
any country or community strilvcs at the heart 
of all that is best in men and women, increases 
the faults of both and their ignorance of each 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 79 

other, and tends consequently to the ultimate 
degradation and misery of all society.* 

* For intelligible reasons I have made no reference in this 
lecture to what has been considered as the particular province 
of all Sisters of Charity deserving the name, — the manage- 
ment of Penitentiaries and Houses of Refuge for the erring 
and the fallen of their own sex. I shall merely observe, that 
there is no department of active benevolence requiring more 
careful preparation and more especial instruction than this. 
The treatment of women whose habitual existence has been a 
perpetual outrage of their nature, must be special and excep- 
tional ; and I do not think that this is always well understood 
by the excellent and virtuous ladies who undertake to manage 
these scarcely manageable creatures. They are thought to be 
mentally and morally depraved, when in fact it is often the 
complete derangement of the nervous system, brought on by 
vice and disease, which produces those changeful moods, those 
fits of sullenness, excitability, obtuseness, insolence, and des- 
peration by which I have seen the most benevolent filled with 
disgust and the most hopeful with despondency. I believe it 
to be true that women, even from the superior delicacy of the 
moral and physical organization, can be more thoroughly, 
hopelessly, and constitutionally vitiated than men ; this I have 
often heard urged as an argument for rejecting and punishing 
them when bad, never for protecting and sparing them when 
good. Such forms of malady in such sacrificed creatures are 
best treated in the country, by avoiding too much sedentary 
employment, by active exercise and really hard work in the 
open air, by talking to them, and sufiering them to talk as 
little as possible of themselves, and by gradually opening the 
mind to religious impressions without exciting resistance or 
despondency. No mere impulse of pity, no mere power of 
will, can enable any one to undertake this most diflficult mis- 
sion, which ought to combine the vocation of charity with 
some of the qualifications of a physician. 



80 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

Let US now look at home, and consider 
what has been done in our own country. Is 
there any hope, any possibility, of organizing 
into some wise and recognized system the 
talent and energy, the piety and tenderness 
of our women for the good of the whole 
community. 

The subject becomes one of awful impor- 
tance when we consider, that in the last cen- 
sus of 1851, there appears an excess of the 
female over the male population of Great 
Britain of more than half-a-million, the pro- 
portion being one hundred and four women 
to every one hundred men. How shall we 
employ this superfluity of the '' feminine ele- 
ment " in society, how turn it to good and 
useful purposes, instead of allowing it to run 
to waste ? Take of these five hundred thou- 
sand superfluous women only the one-hun- 
dredth part, say five thousand women, who are 
willing to work for good, to join the commu- 
nion of labor, under a directing power, if only 
they knew how, — if only they could learn 
how, — best to do their work, and if employ- 
ment were open to them, — what a phalanx 
it would be if properly organized ! 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 81 

Everywhere I find the opinion of thought- 
ful and intelligent men corroborative of my 
own observations and conclusions. In spite 
of the adverse feeling of " that other public^ to 
which we^ the sensible reflecting public, are 
not in the least degree related," ^ — in spite of 
routine and prejudice, — the feeling of those 
who in the long run will lead opinion, is for us. 
They say: "In all our national institutions 
we want the help of women. In our hospi- 
tals, prisons, lunatic asylums, workhouses, 
reformatory schools, elementary schools, — 
everywhere we want efficient women, and 
none are to be found prepared or educated 
for our purpose." The men whom I have 
heard speak thus, seem to regard this infusion 
of a superior class of working women into 
our public institutions as a new want, a new 
expedient. They do not seem to feel or rec- 
ognize the profound truth, that the want now 
so generally felt and acknowledged, arises out 
of a great unacknowledged law of the Cre- 
ator, a law old as creation itself, which makes 

* Vide " Household Words," yoI. xi. No. 254 



82 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

the moral health of the community to depend 
on the co-operation of woman in all work 
that concerns the well-being of man. For 
as I have said before, it is not in one or two 
relations, but in all the possible relations of 
life, in which men and women are concerned, 
that they must work together for mutual 
improvement, and the general good; and I 
return to the principle laid down at first, " the 
communion of love and the communion of 
labor." * 

* Since this lecture was delivered I find tlie following pas- 
sage in a paper on ** Municipal Government, " published by 
the Manchester Statistical Society. 

*' In carrying out these and various other objects of impor- 
tance, I am persuaded that the agency of the female sex is 
necessary, and that without the well organized aid of benev- 
olent and educated women, municipal government will ever 
remain limited and imperfect. I do not contemplate the for- 
mal election of females to municipal offices, although this 
would appear from ' Grant on Corporations,' not to be with- 
out precedent in England, where women, we know, are still, 
by Law, eligible as overseers of the poor, and capable of filling 
the highest office in the kingdom. ' ' 

*' A number of years ago, in a paper read before this 
Society, entitled ' Thoughts on the Excess of Adult Females 
in the Population of Great Britain, with reference to its 
Causes and Consequences,' I endeavored to show that the 
female sex, in Christian countries, are probably designed for 
duties more in number and in importance than have yet been 
assigned them. The reasons were, that above the twentieth 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 83 

" In England," (it has been truly said,) 
" there are no men to be found systematically 
trained to the moral management of convicts, 
such as are to be found in Germany and other 



year, in all fully-peopled states, whether in Europe or in 
North America, women considerably outnumber the other 
sex ; and that, as this excess is produced by causes which 
remain in steady operation, we detect therein a natural law, 
and may allowably infer that it exists for beneficent social 
ends, — ends, amongst others, such as those I am attempting 
to explain and recommend. 

" I own that I cannot but regard the population of our 
large towns as in a very unsatisfactory state ; and feel per- 
suaded that the wisest, — the best devised, — regulations e?i- 
forced by the police alone ^ as is the case at present, will not 
succeed ; but I think that a body of educated ladies for each 
ward, acting in concert with the legal authorities,^^ {that is 
to say, men and women working together,) *' would be found 
of wonderful service in detecting radical evils, especially the 
sources of preventible poverty ; or what is much the same, the 
various temptations which beset the laborer's family, from 
bad laws and defective arrangements of different kinds, owing 
to which the amount of sickness, poverty, immorality, and 
unhappiness is at all times appallingly great." — {Suggestio7is 
for the Improvement of Municipal Government in populous 
Manufacturing Towns, by John Roberton, published in the 
Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society. 1864.) 

I do not venture to give any opinion with regard to the 
** Suggestions " here thrown out in reference to women, — 
for I have never thought about Municipal Government or the 
duties of Overseers, — but I extract the above passages as 
showing the ideas entertained and openly expressed by some 
experienced and intelligent men. 



84 SISTERS OF CHARITY 



countries. It is the bane of the English sys- 
tem of government throughout, that it does 
not render the public service, in its various 
civil departments, a series of professions, for 
which men must be specially educated and 
trained ; and the great English universities, 
in consequence, do not educate young men 
for any pursuits on earth, except those of a 
gentleman and a scholar." * In the same 
manner the education given to our women 
is merely calculated to render them ornamen- 
tal and well-informed ; but it does not train 
them, even those who are so inclined and 
fitted by nature, to be effective instruments of 
social improvement. Whether men, without 
the assistance and sympathetic approval of 
well-educated women, are likely to improve 
and elevate the moral tone of society, or work 
out good in any especial sphere or profession, 
is, I think, hardly a question. God, who 
created the human race male and female, did 
not make human culture and progress to de- 
pend on one half of it. 

* Combe ''On the Principles of Criminal Legislation and 
the Practice of Prison Discipline.''^ 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 85 

I believe the employment of well trained 
women in the reformatory schools for juvenile 
delinquents, which are to be established under 
a late Act of Parliament, has been already 
suggested. It is a great advance in opinion 
that the possible good of such a measure 
should be spoken of in high quarters. For 
about ten years, perhaps, the means of carry- 
ing it out may be considered and debated ; 
in another ten years, some plan will be pro- 
posed ; and in another ten years, perhaps, 
adopted ; for such is the usual progress of 
any great moral miovement in '^that other 
public," — that self-satisfied, unreasoning, cow- 
ardly, somnolent public which we repudiate ; 
wherein such topics are discussed with refer- 
ence merely to custom and expediency, not 
to justice and necessity, — with reference to 
human laws, which can be made and unmade, 
not with reference to divine laws, immutable 
principles of life, which cannot be violated 
or neglected in any social community, without 
bringing in the elements of demoralization and 
decay. 

And respecting that movement in favor of 
8 



86 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

the ^\Tetched children who so long infested 
our streets and crammed om' gaols, and for 
whom a long delayed measure of wisdom and 
justice was obtained last year, may I not be 
permitted to say how much that cause owed 
to the unceasing exertions of three admirable 
women, true Sisters of Charity, w^ho, to my 
know^ledge, have been occupied in this good 
work for twenty years ? With regard to the 
first of these ladies, her attention was early 
called to the subject, and she never ceased to 
advocate, and, I may say, to agitate the theme. 
She moved in high society ; she was nobly 
born and connected, eloquent, and clever, and 
lively ; and she made use of all these advan- 
tages to promote the settled purpose of her 
mind. She failed in some attempts to execute 
plans of reform without the legislative sanc- 
tion, but she was not discouraged. She at- 
tacked Home Secretaries, and she plagued 
magistrates ; no JNI. P. was safe from her, no 
Minister of State. Like the woman in Scrip- 
ture who persecuted the unjust judge, she 
made herself listened to by her " much speak- 
ing," and at length leavened the society in 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 87 

which she moved with her own feelings, her 
own hopes, her own faith. The second lady 
I refer to was one who carried out into action, 
and tested by practical experience, and illus- 
trated by published documents, by well-digest- 
ed facts, and eloquent reasoning, the truths 
which her sister in beneficence had advoca- 
ted. Need I name Mary Carpenter, — a name 
publicly and inseparably connected with the 
cause ? When called up before a Committee 
of the House of Commons, her evidence was 
so clear, so conclusive, and given with such 
self-possession and precision, as well as femi- 
nine feeling, that I have heard those who 
were present express their admiration, — their 
conviction that the testimony and the argu- 
ments of this excellent woman had, in fact, 
turned the scale. The third lady I will not 
name. She not only brought to the question 
a noble and powerful intellect, but she invest- 
ed in it a portion of her affections, — a part 
of her very heart ; she gave it all the advan- 
tages of her character and position ; and she 
had wealth which enabled her to purchase 
and pay well for the exertions of others, their 



88 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

brains, their pens. When, last year, after 
more than twenty years had thus passed, the 
Act of Parliament was obtained, (which, 
however inadequate in some respects, did at 
least recognize the principle for which they 
were contending,) was there not joy in those 
three hearts ? I know there was. I had no 
right to share in the triumph ; I had done 
nothing; but I could sympathize, — as you 
do ! God forbid that I should seek to lessen 
the value of the voluntary aid, the indefatiga- 
ble exertions, the eloquent pleading of those 
wise and good men who were united in this 
cause, and at length succeeded in gaining it ; 
but let me say that this was a strong instance 
of what I mean by the " communion of love 
and the communion of labor," carried out into 
social public objects. 

It is perfectly notorious that in the reform- 
atory and elementary schools for boys in 
America, great use is made of female influ- 
ence and tuition. "Women were first resorted 
to from a scarcity of masters, and the greater 
cheapness of female labor. What was at 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



89 



first a matter of expediency and necessity, 
has since become matter of choice, for the 
experiment has been crowned with success, 
and has been productive of far more good 
than was at first contemplated ; and I believe 
that in the Schools or Houses of Detention 
contemplated here under the new Act of Par- 
liament for young delinquents, the teaching 
and influence of well-trained gentlewomen 
invested with aji official authority, might ex- 
ercise incalculable good. " I can manage any 
number of naughty boys," said a lady who is 
celebrated among us as a Protestant Sister 
of Charity on a large scale, " no matter how 
wicked and mutinous. I feel that I have the 
power to subdue them ; but I confess I have 
great difficulty with girls, — I do not know 
why." The cause, if we looked to Nature 
and her wise adaptations, would not be far 
to seek.* 



* I have heard of a lady now (or very lately) residing near 
Harvard University, '* who, amid the duties and cares of her 
own houseliold, fitted many young men for those colleges 
which neither she nor any of her sex were, as students, ever 
allowed to enter. For twenty years this lady has been accus- 
tomed to receive under her roof those students of the Univer- 
8* 



90 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

With regard to the employment of women 
in the lunatic asylums, I can only say that I 
have the testimony of men of large experience 
that feminine aid, influence, presence, would 
in many cases be most beneficial in the male 
wards.* Of course there are certain cases in 
which it would be dangerous, inadmissible ; 

sity who were rusticated for various offences; and, while 
kneading her bread or plying her needle, she assisted them 
in their classical studies, and mended their manners at the ' 
same time." 

It is well known that one of the best and most popular 
teachers of navigation and nautical mathematics and astrono- 
my in England is a lady — Mrs. Janet Taylor; that her 
classes are celebrated, and numerously attended by men who 
have been at sea, as well as by- youths preparing for the 
merchant service. 

* Of the Salpetriere, Howard says, that, at the time of 
his visit (1776), the whole house "was kept clean and quiet 
by the great attention of the religious women who served it ; 
but it was terribly crowded, containing more than five thou- 
sand poor, sick, and insane persons." 

He describes the Hospital " des Incurables" at Paris, con- 
taining four hundred aged and infirm persons, as admirably 
served and managed by forty Sisters. 

Again: — "Here (at Ghent) is a foundation belonging to 
the Beguines for the reception of twelve men who are insane, 
and for sick and aged women. The insane have, when re- 
quisite, assistance from their own sex; and the tenderness 
with which both these and the poor women are treated by the 
Sisters, gave me no little pleasure." — {Howard on Prisons, 
p. 145.) 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 91 

but it is their opinion that in most cases it 
would have a soothing, sanitary, harmonizing 
effect. In reference to this subject let me men- 
tion a lady with whom I have the honor to be 
personally acquainted. She is a native of the 
United States, and has given her attention for 
many years to the management of the insane, 
and the improvement of mad-houses. She 
has travelled alone through every part of the 
United States, — from New York to Chicago, 
from New Orleans to Quebec. She has been 
the means of founding nineteen new asylums, 
and improving and enlarging a greater num- 
ber. She has won those in power to listen to 
her, and is considered in her own country a 
first-rate authority on such subjects, just as 
Mrs. Fry was here in regard to prisons, Mrs. 
Chisholm in regard to emigration, and Miss 
Carpenter in regard to juvenile criminals. As 
to the use of trained women in lunatic asy- 
lums, I will say no more at present, but throw 
it out as a suggestion to be dealt with by 
physiologists, and entrusted to time. 

With reference to the employment of wo- 



92 SISTERS OF CHARITV, 

men as a higher order of nurses in hospitals, 
late events might almost render it superfluous 
to speak at all, but that it is important to my 
present theme to look back to the history of 
public opinion on this subject. 

I find that more than thirty years ago, — 
long before the institution at Kaiserswerth ex- 
isted or was thought of, — the late Dr. Gooch 
entertained the idea of establishing in this 
country some institution analogous to that 
of the Sisters of Charity. Dr. Gooch is to 
this day a great medical authority as a phy- 
sician ; he was also a philanthropist and a 
philosopher. During a tour in Belgium he 
had been struck — as all are sti'uck — by the 
institution of the Beguines, their well-ordered 
hospitals, and their general efhciency in visit- 
ing and prescribing for the sick poor. He 
corresponded with Southey on this subject, 
and at the end of the second volume of 
Southey's " Colloquies '' may be found the 
ideas he had brought from the Netherlands 
and communicated to his friend : also two 
letters published in the " Medical Gazette," 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 93 

and signed " A Country Surgeon," which are 
now known to have been written by Dr. 
Gooch. There is also a most eloquent ex- 
position of Southey's own opinions, holding 
up to us the example of the Beguines and the 
Sisters of Charity ; and, which is curious, he 
seems to have put his trust in Quakerism 
rather than in our own Church, (the church 
which he so devoutly admired and defended ;) 
and he even hoped that Mrs. Opie would do 
for our hospitals what Mrs. Fry had done for 
our prisons. But he mistook the character of 
Mrs. Opie : it was not the vocation of that 
amiable and gifted woman. 

You must permit me to read one or two 
passages from these letters written by Dr. 
Gooch in 1825, because of their beauty, and 
because of their good sense. He begins by 
describing at length the appearance and man- 
ners of the Sisters of Charity in France and 
Belgium ; their respectable, kindly appearance; 
their peculiar yet appropriate dress ; the care, 
the tenderness, the skill with which they at- 
tended on the sick. He then adds : — 



94 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

" Let all real Christians join and found an 
order of women like th^^Sisters of Charity in 
Catholic countries : let them be selected for 
good plain sense, kindness of disposition, in- 
defatigable industry, and deep piety ; let them 
receive, — not a technical and scientific, — but 
a practical medical education. For this pur- 
pose let them be placed both as nurses and 
pupils in the hospitals of Edinburgh and Lon- 
don, or in the county hospitals ; let their 
attention be pointed by the attending physi- 
cians to the particular symptoms by which he 
distinguishes the disease; let them be made 
as familiar with the best remedies (which are 
always few) as they are with barley-water, 
gruel, and beef-tea ; let them learn the rules 
by which the remedies are to be employed ; 
let them be examined frequently on these sub- 
jects, in order to see that they carry these rules 
clearly in their heads ; let books be framed for 
them containing the essential rules of practice, 
— briefly, clearly, and untechnically written. 
Let such women, thus educated, be distributed 
among the country parishes of the kingdom, 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 95 

and be maintained by parish allowance, which 
now goes to the parish surgeon, who should 
be resorted to only in difficult cases ; let them 
be examined every half year by competent 
physicians about the state of their medical 
knowledge. Let this be done, and I fearlessly 
predict that my friend, and all those who are 
similarly situated and zealous with himself, 
will no longer complain that their sick flock 
suffer from medical neglect. 

" It may be objected that women with such 
an education would form a bad substitute for 
a scientific medical attendance. Be it remem- 
bered, however, that the choice is not between 
such women and a profound and perfect phy- 
sician or surgeon (if there is such a person), 
but between such women and the ordinary 
run of country apothecaries ; the latter labor- 
ing under the additional disadvantage of 
wanting time for the application of what skill 
they have." 

" If any attempt should be made to intro- 
duce Sisters of Charity into England, I would 



96 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

advise the experiment to be made at first on a 
small scale. They should be not mere nurses 
and religious instructors, but a set of religious 
female physicians. I would select two or 
three women, — not superannuated servants 
in search of a quiet livelihood, who are think- 
ing of nothing but how to make money with 
the least trouble, and who would apply, or be 
recommended, in crowds for such a purpose, — 
but women originally and habitually of a 
higher order, young enough to learn, yet old 
enough to be sick of worldly vanities; in 
short, with strong sense, a good education, 
and something of the devotee (there are many 
such). I would place them in some hospital 
under an experienced, clear-headed, practical 
physician, who should explain to them in un- 
technical language, as they went from bed to 
bed, signs by which he is guided in the choice 
of his remedies. I would sharpen their atten- 
tion and assist their memories by frequent 
examinations into their knowledge ; always 
remembering that it is not safely deposited in 
the mind until the student can state it and 
apply it herself. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 97 

" This system of instruction should continue 
until my Sisters of Charity have acquired a 
readiness in detecting all ordinary diseases, in 
selecting the guiding symptoms, and in the 
use of that short list of remedies which even 
medical men find sufficient in pauper practice. 
When they are ripe for my purpose, I would 
(taking a hint from the Soeurs de Charite) 
station two of them in a cottage placed in the 
centre of some country district. I would have 
them maintained partly from the parish funds, 
partly by the voluntary subscriptions of the 
opulent people of the neighborhood, and partly 
by those of the charitable and religious world. 
Their kindness and care would soon ensure 
the good will of the poor. A few cures would 
be followed by medical reputation, and the 
cottagers of the district would soon have rea- 
son to bless the hour when these useful women 
settled in their neighborhood." 

This plan may appear at first sight some- 
what Utopian ; but is it so really ? Could 
there be a better way of employing some of 
our superfluous women ? 



98 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

I must quote one more passage : — 
" Many will think that it is impossible to 
impart a useful knowledge of medicine to wo- 
men w4io are ignorant of anatomy, physiology, 
and pathology. A profound knowledge, of 
course, would not, but a very useful degree of 
it might: — a degree which, combined with 
kindness and assiduity, would be far superior 
to that which the country poor receive at 
present. I have known matrons and sisters 
of hospitals with more practical tact in the 
detection and. treatment of disease than half 
the young surgeons by whom the country 
poor are commonly attended." 

These w^ere the words of an eminent prac- 
tical physician thirty years ago. No result 
followed, — scarcely was public attention 
wakened to the subject ; the writer went 
down to his last rest with a favorite idea 
unaccomplished; but heaven and earth shall 
pass away before one particle of that truth 
which has emanated from the benevolent, 
trusting, faithful spirit shall fail and perish. 



« 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 99 

The feeling with which the expedition of 
the lady-nurses to the East was regarded by 
the lower order of medical men was exhibited 
in many ways not very creditable. It re- 
minded me of what had taken place some 
ten or twelve years ago when the female 
School of Design was first projected; when 
a petition was drawn np and handed round 
for signature by a certain set of artists and 
engravers, praying that the women might not 
be taught at the expense of government " arts 
which would interfere with the employment 
of men, and take the bread out of their 
mouths." The men who signed and circu- 
lated this precious document were not wicked 
or bad-hearted. I dare say they meant well. 
They only took that selfish, one-sided view 
of the subject natural in persons who had 
been ill-educated, and were totally ignorant of 
the bearings of any large moral or social 
question. Of the obvious benefit such an 
institution might afford to their daughters or 
sisters, thus lightening the burthen on men 
with large families, they did not think ; — far 
less on the right of every human being to the 



100 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

due cultivation and exercise of every good 
gift "that cometh from above." Had their 
views been listened to, how many hundreds 
of young women who are now maintaining 
themselves or helping their families, would be 
perishing on the streets, in prisons, in work- 
houses ! And who would have been the bet- 
ter ? Of the artists who signed that petition 
some are dead, and some whom I know 
would not like to be reminded of their share 
in it, — are indeed thoroughly ashamed of it. 
I believe that if among medical men a petition 
were now handed round for signature, praying 
that women should not be taught at the ex- 
pense of government, the physical and moral 
conditions of health, the symptoms of disease, 
the preparation of the best remedies and the 
rules for administering them, lest they should 
" interfere with the employments of men, and 
take the bread out of their mouths," — I am 
afraid there are well intentioned and well edu- 
cated men who would at this time be induced 
to sign such a paper ; but I believe that twen- 
ty — even ten — years hence, they would look 
back upon their signatures and the whole trans- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 101 

action with as much disgust and auiazement 
as is now excited by the exploded attempt to 
crush and sneer down the female School at 
Marlborough House. 

' As I have said, — no immediate result fol- 
lowed upon the suggestion of Dr. Gooch ; but 
the good thus sown only slept, like the seed' 
in wintry ground. 

A few years ago, several intelligent and 
benevolent persons, men and women, who 
had had opportunities of studying the man- 
agement of the institution at Kaiserswerth, 
conceived the idea that a similar institution, 
for similar purposes, might be founded in 
England, and that both our government and 
our clergy would be induced to co-operate in 
such a plan, if once public interest could be 
excited in its favor. It was admitted on all 
sides, that the general management of our 
hospitals and charitable institutions exhibited 
the want of female aid, such as exists in the 
hospitals abroad, — the want of a moral, re- 
ligious, intelligent, sympathizing influence? 

9* 



102 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

combined with the physical cares of a com- 
mon nurse. Some inquiry was made into 
the general character of hospital nurses, and 
the qualifications desired; and what were 
these qualifications ? Obedience, presence of 
mind, cheerfulness, sobriety, patience, forbear- 
ance, judgment, kindness of heart, a light deli- 
cate hand, a gentle voice, a quick eye ; — these 
were the qualities enumerated as not merely 
desirable, but necessary, in a good and effi- 
cient nurse, — a long list of virtues not easily 
to be purchased for 141. 10s. a year! — quali- 
fications, indeed, which in their union would 
form an admirable woman in any class of life, 
and fit her for any sphere of duty, from the 
highest to the lowest. In general, however, 
the requirements of our medical men are 
much more limited ; they consider themselves 
fortunate if they can ensure obedience and 
sobriety even, without education, tenderness, 
intelligence, religious feeling, or any high 
principle of duty. On the whole, the testi- 
mony brought before us is sickening. Drunk- 
enness, profligacy, violence of temper, horribly 
coarse and brutal language, — these are com- 



« 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 103 

mon. We know that there are admirable ex- 
ceptions, more particularly in the great London 
Hospitals ; and the spectacle of devoted char- 
ity exhibited by the officials in the Middlesex 
Hospital during the late visitation of the 
cholera must be fresh in the memory of those 
whom I address. Still, the reverse of the pic- 
ture is more generally true. The toil is great, 
the duties disgusting, the pecuniary remunera- 
tion small in comparison ; so that there is 
nothing to invite the co-operation of a better 
class of women, but the highest motives which 
can influence a true Christian. At one moment 
the selfishness and irritability of the sufferers 
require a strong control; at another time their 
dejection and bodily weakness require the 
utmost tenderness, sympathy, and judgment. 
To rebuke the self-righteous, to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to strengthen, to comfort the 
feeble, to drop the words of peace into the 
disturbed or softened mind just at the right 
moment j — there are few nurses who could be 
entrusted with such a charge, or be brought 
to regard it as a part of their duty : while the 
" overworked chaplain," as he is called, in 



104 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

some of the evidence before me, cannot suffice 
for all, and pays his visits only at stated times, 
unless urgently called for. 

It was from a consideration of these and 
other evils, and a comparison of our system 
with that of the Roman Catholic and Prot- 
estant Sisterhoods abroad, that a paper was 
drawn up and sent round to a number of 
chaplains, medical men, and governors of 
hospitals, containing a sketch of the training 
system adopted in the institutions at Kai- 
serswerth and elsewhere, and inquiries as to 
the best means of raising the moral character 
of hospital nurses by substituting women of a 
better class, properly instructed, and capable 
of being at once the delegates of the medical 
men, the assistants of the chaplain, the com- 
fort, blessing, and support of the poor sufferers 
to whom they minister. 

The answers which this circular elicited, 
twenty-three in number, are given at length 
in the little book already referred to,* and very 

* ** Hospitals and Sisterhoods." 



I 



ABROAD ANP AT HOME. 105 

curiously characteristic they are of the state of 
feeling and opinion on a most important sub- 
ject. They are too long to be read here ; but, 
however differing in views and in character, 
the writers agree almost without exception in 
two things, — in allowing the evils complain- 
ed of even to their utmost extent, and in their 
despair of any remedy. 

These letters were published, but no result 
followed. The so-called practical men, clergy 
and laity, admired the project, praised the 
amiable enthusiasts who advocated it, and 
shook their wise heads, just as they had for- 
merly shaken them over theories of education 
and plans of juvenile reform. 

When Admiral Sir Edward Parry was at 
the head of the naval hospital at Haslar, the 
necessity for a better order of nurses for his 
sick men was forced on his attention. Per- 
haps he had heard of the employment of the 
Sisters of Charity in the naval hospitals of 
France ; at all events, the hope of procuring 
nurses of a similar character induced him to 



106 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 



dra^y up a sort of appeal, in which he advert- 
ed to the impossibility of obtaining any at- 
tendance for the hospital inmates, but such as 
was of the lowest grade, — such as only '^the 
most absolute necessity would justify his ad- 
mitting into the establishment." The result 
was, incalculable evil to the men ; who, in- 
stead of being elevated and softened by suf- 
fering and seclusion, were morally lowered 
and hardened by contact with coarse and 
immoral women, even at the very moment 
when all that was best and manliest within 
them ought to have been wakened up and 
appealed to ; and most earnestly he solicited 
the aid of all good Christians to induce three 
or four respectable women to volunteer their 
services and to undergo an especial training, 
such as had been adopted at Kaiserswerth ; 
then to superintend others, and thus to help 
him in his earnest endeavor to raise the moral 
tone of one of the most important of our 
national hospitals. The paper w^as signed by 
five medical officers, and circulated extensive- 
ly. It did not elicit a single offer. " I con- 
fess," said Sir Edward, commenting with 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 107 

some sadness on his complete failure, " I have 
never been able to arrive at any definite or 
satisfactory conclusion as to the best mode of 
meeting the requirements of a Protestant com- 
munity." * 

Let us contrast this with Kaiserswerth, — a 
Protestant institution, be it remembered. An 
appeal being made in 1853, that more volun- 
tary nurses were wanting in the hospitals, it 
was answered by one hundred and fifty appli- 
cants, of whom seventy were accepted and 
put under a course of instruction. 

One fact more. The Bishop of London 
publicly expressed his regrets that he had 
seen, one after another, all the plans for this 
object fail utterly. As to the reason for it, he 
seemed as much at a loss as Sir Edward 
Parry. 

It would have been said, in truth, but a 
few weeks ago, that no cause could be more 
hopeless, than that which I am now advocat- 
ing. The obstacle seemed to consist, not 

* ** Hospitals and Sistevlioods," p. 41. 



lOS SISTERS OF CHARITY. 

in the want of charity, but in the want of 
moral courage and the most obtuse ignorance. 
Opinions are believed in simply because they 
are echoed round us. The conscience is train- 
ed to obey the pressure of an exterior force, 
rather than trust to the promptings of an in- 
ternal impulse; and the convictions and the 
will of a generous and powerful individual 
nature sink into inertness for want of self- 
reliance. How many women, widows, and 
unmarried of a certain age, would have gladly 
responded to the appeal from Haslar Hospital, 
if ignorance, timidity, a defective education, 
and a terror of the vulgar, stupid prejudices 
around them, — chiefly, I am ashamed to say, 
masculine prejudices, — had not stifled their 
natural feelings and trammelled their patural 
energies ! True, hundreds of women had done 
the same thing before ; but then those were 
Nuns and Roman Catholics, — words of fear ! 
— precedents to be repudiated! — snares forg- 
ed by Satan himself in guise of philanthropy ! 
Thus the women had no moral courage for 
themselves. On the part of the men — (and 
no combined efforts of women can possibly 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 109 

succeed or come to good without the co- 
operation and guidance of men) — there was 
an absurd horror of all innovation ; want of 
confidence in the material to be employed ; 
want of talent and influence to organize it. 

Every one admitted, as a natural law, an 
undeniable truth, that early education and the 
nursing of the sick belong especially to the 
women. Every one admitted the great, the 
almost insuperable difficulty of finding wo- 
men competent to educate, or competent to 
nurse. To furnish them with the means of 
acquiring skill and competency in their own 
department of work has never been regarded 
as the duty, the business, the interest of our 
pastors and masters ; while, with a strange 
injustice, the want of such skill and compe- 
tency has been a perpetual source of com- 
plaint and ridicule. The education commonly 
given to a boy makes him, at least, a brave 
man ; a man who can fight till he falls. Does 
the education given to a woman make her a 
brave woman ? Yet how every man feels the 
value of those words, " A brave woman ! '' — 
10 



110 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

a woman who knows how to act in difficul- 
tiesj how to endure in suffering, how to be 
faithful to a trust, and can speak the truth 
without fear and without disguise. A wo- 
man should be a brave woman who aspires 
to please a brave m.an ! 

Whatsoever things are good, whatsoever 
things are wise, w^hatsoever things are holy, 
must be accomplished by communion between 
brave men and brave women. The work must 
be shared between them, or it will perish 
and fail utterly. Yet up to this moment you 
will find men and women working separately. 
You will observe that all legislation takes 
for granted that men and women are to 
be an everlasting cause of mutual mischief 
wherever combined ; and always supposes an 
antagonistic position if they are separated. 
The most humane and recent laws aspire no 
farther than to defend the women from being 
beaten to death, and this because all legisla- 
tion is derived from the old Pagan law, or 
the old monkish prejudices. These barbarous, 
and stupid, and irreligious notions have caused 



J^BROAD AND AT HOME. Ill 

the evil they supposed, and incalculable has 
been the amount of sin and misery springing 
from them. 

Not for ever, certainly, — but for how long 
a period, who can tell? — such miserable ob- 
stacles might have continued to limit, to per- 
plex, to paralyze the aspirations of the wise 
and benevolent, if a crisis had not come, and 
if that crisis had not found among us a man 
with sufficient faith and courage to break 
down the barriers of routine ; and a woman 
generous and gentle, and gifted with sufficient 
energy to act out " the plan which pleased 
her childish thought," * and prepared, by edu- 
cation and habit, as well as by a rare combi- 
nation of the sym.pathetic and administrative 
faculties, to do so. Nothing could more 
strongly exhibit the perplexed state of feeling 
and opinion in this country, on some momen- 
tous points, than the manner in which Mr. 
Sidney Herbert's proposal to send off a staff 

* *' It is tlie generous spirit, wlio wlien brought 
Among the tasks of real life hath wrought 
Upon the plan which pleased his childish thought." 

TVordsivorth, 



112 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

of voluntary female nurses to our hospitals in 
the East, and Miss Nightingale's consent to 
place herself at the head of them, were received 
by the people, and commented on by the 
newspapers. There was, indeed, a genuine 
spontaneous burst of admiration from the 
public heart, mixed up, however, with fear, 
with incredulity, with amazement ; as if it 
were a thing unheard of, unknown, and now 
for the first time attempted, that women of 
refined habits, and holding a certain position 
in society, should, from motives of piety 
and humanity, become nurses in a hospital.* 

* ^' When, at the commencement of the war, the practice of 
the French to employ female nurses in their hospitals was 
spoken of, the opinion of the medical men and of the medical 
department was given against the employment of female 
nnrses. I did not feel myself at liberty to act at yariance 
with that opinion and the experience on which it was founded, 
although I now feel that that experience was based upon a 
totally different state of things, and that those opinions were 
formed upon circumstances which did not resemble the pres- 
ent. The reason why in former times nurses were found 
unsuited to the care of English soldiers was because the 
women selected for that service were not, as now, women of 
education and of pious feelings, who volunteered their ser- 
vices, but women hired for the service, who, both abroad and 
at home, grew callous, and manifested a harshness and want 
of sympathy with the sufferers that rendered them unfit for 
the due performance of their duties. But hardly any other 



ABIiOAD AND AT HOME. 113 

" Common-sense " styled them romantic^ a 
convenient epithet, by which the worldly- 
minded set the seal of reprobation on any- 
thing which steps beyond the bounds of 
conventionalism, — as if all that is really great 
and good in humanity were to be kept for 
fiction and poetry, and only its futilities and 
frivolities acted out into realities ! And " sen- 
timent," with that squeamishness in regard to 
manners and latitude in regard to morals, 
which characterize certain classes of society, 
stigmatized the whole arrangement as " unfe- 

ladies had glyen a fairer trial to the present system than the 
one who has so nobly volunteered to go to the hospital at 
Scutari. I believe that the names of Miss Nightingale and of 
those ladies who have stepped forward in the cause of Chris- 
tian love will be handed down to posterity in company with 
those of the gallant men who have been wounded in the ser- 
vice of their country. They have left a comfortable, and in 
many instances a luxurious home, for the purpose of adopting 
a profession which is most distastefal to many women of deli- 
cate minds, in the hope of assuaging the sufferings of our 
gallant fellows, and of falfilling a Christian duty. I believe 
that through the instrumentality of these ladies more will be 
done to reestablish the efl&ciency of our hospital establish- 
ments, than has ever been done by the medical men them- 
selves, although there never have been greater exertions, 
greater self-denial, or greater zeal, shown by the members of 
that profession." — {Sj^eech of the Duke of JVewcastle, Dec. 
12, 1854 ) 

10* 



SISTERS or CHARITY, 



minine,'' — another word of most convenient 
misapplication. The most hopeful and liberal 
minded were troubled by a vision of a hun- 
dred enthusiastic sentimental women rushiiig 
off to Scutari, and on their arrival there falling 
into hysterics; — of "hard-headed Scotch sur- 
geons," wrathfully aghast at the invasion of 
their domains by impertinent femalities. Then 
there was the mockery of the light-minded; 
the atrocious innuendo of the dissolute ; the 
sneer of the ignorant; the scepticism of the 
cold. I have seen men, who deem it quite a 
natural and necessarv thinsf that a woman. — 
some women at least, — should lead the life of 
a courtesan, put on a look of offended pro- 
priety at the idea of a woman nursing a sick 
soldier. I have seen men, ay, and women 
too, who deem it a matter of course that our 
streets should be haunted by contagious vice, 
disgusted by the idea of women turning 
apothecaries and hospitalieres. And worse 
than all, I have heard men and V\-omen too, 
who acknowledge the teaching of Christ, who 
call themselves by his name, who believe in 
his mission of mercy, disputing about the exact 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 115 

shade of orthodoxy in a woman who had 
offered up every faculty of her being at the 
feet of her Redeemer ! 

On the other hand, people were heard con- 
gratulating each other on "the lucky chance" 
that a Miss Nightingale should have been 
forth-coming just at the moment she was 
wanted. Suppose there had been no Miss 
Nightingale at once able and willing to do the 
work, — no woman in a position which gave 
her social influence to overcome the obstacles 
of custom and prejudice, — suppose that the 
example of noble courage and devotion which 
led the way for others had been wanting, — 
is every crisis of danger, distress, and difficulty 
involving human life, human suffering, human 
interests of the deepest consequence, to find 
us at the mercy of " a lucky chance ? " — at 
the mercy of people who have never thought 
seriously on any great question, or taken the 
trouble to make up their minds one way or 
anothar? I trust that England has many 
daughters not unworthy of being named with 
Florence Nightingale ; as quick in sympathy, 



116 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 



as calm in judgment, as firm in duty, as awake 
to charity; but the ability, the acquirements, 
the experience, the tact, the skill in judging 
and managing oharacter, and overcoming ad- 
verse circumstances, at which ministers and 
officials were filled with wonder, — were these 
matters of chance ? They were the result of 
years of study, of patient observation, of severe 
training. In what school ? In none that 
England affords to her daughters ; this is the 
wonder ! 

Even in the applause, — the sort of glorifi- 
cation, — which has followed on the success 
of this experiment, there has been something 
to sadden and humiliate a thinking and feeling 
mind. There has been perpetual reiteration 
of astonishment at the magnanimity of those 
who had quitted a comfortable, and in some 
cases a luxurious home, and all the pleasures 
of a refined and intellectual existence, " to 
assuage the sufferings of our gallant country- 
men, and to perform a sacred and sfiblime 
duty ;" as if to assuage suffering and to prefer 
a sacred and sublime duty to the temptations 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 117 

of leisure or pleasure, were not the woman's 
province and privilege as well as the man's ; 
as if the same thing had never been done 
before in past times and other creeds ; as if 
in these present times we had not known 
women who, in the midst of all the splendor 
of a luxurious home, have perished by a slow 
wasting disease of body and mind, because 
they had nothing to do, — no sphere of activity 
commensurate with the large mental powers 
or passionate energy of character with which 
God had endowed them. Send such a woman 
to her piano, her books, her cross-stitch; she 
answers you with despair ! But send her on 
some mission of mercy, send her where she 
may perhaps die by inches in achieving good 
for others, and the whole spirit rises up strong 
and rejoicing.* 

* One of tlie ladies of Scutari, ricli, well-born, and accom- 
plished, on being informed that she had been selected as one 
of those who were to be sent to a post where additional diffi- 
culty, suffering, and even danger awaited her, clasped her 
hands and uttered a fervent " Thank God ! " 

I remember a Sister of Charity who had been sent off at 
half an hour's notice to a district where the cholera was 
raging among the most squalid and miserable poor, and I 
never shall forget the look of radiant happiness and thank- 
fulness on that face. 



118 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

I am anxious on this point not to be mis- 
understood. If you speak to some people of 
the necessity of finding better and higher em- 
ployment for women, they inquire merrily 
how you would like a female house of par- 
liament ? or they congratulate themselves that 
ladies are not likely to act as constables, or to 
be drawn for the militia. Thus they would 
put down one of the most terribly momentous 
questions that has ever occupied the thoughts 
of thoughtful men, — a question which is at 
the very core of social morals : but none who 
now listen to me would, I think, condescend 
to such cruel and absurd wit. 

Then, again, an intelligent and amiable man 
will say : — " It is all very well ; but I should 
not like my daughter to do so-and-so." But 
the question is not what this or that indivi- 
dual would choose his daughter to do. It 
remains with him to settle this within the 
precincts of his family; only it is most unjust 
to make his particular feelings and opinions 
the rule of life for others, without once 
approaching the question as one of social 



« 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 119 

morals, as one of justice and humanity; with- 
out once reflecting that all the unemployed 
and superfluous women in England cannot be 
sempstresses, governesses, and artists. Why 
is it that we see so many women carefully 
educated going over to the Roman Catholic 
Church ? For no other reason but for the 
power it gives them to throw their energies 
into a sphere of definite utility under the con- 
trol of a high religious responsibility. "What 
has been done by our sisters of the Roman 
Catholic Church, can it not be accomplished 
in a religion which does not aim to subjugate, 
but to direct the will ? What has been done 
under the hardest despotisms, and recognized 
in the midst of the wildest excesses of de- 
mocracy, can it not be done under a political 
system which disdains to use the best and 
highest faculties of our nature in a spirit of 
calculation, or in furtherance of the purposes 
of a hierarchy or an oligarchy, — which boasts 
its equal laws and equal rights, and is at 
this moment ruled by a gentle-hearted, noble- 
minded woman ? 



120 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

With regard to this present experiment, (if 
that can be called an experiment which the 
experience of a thousand years had establish- 
ed as a principle,) it seems to have succeeded 
beyond all hope, and its success has demon- 
strated the deep-lying wisdom of what was at 
first a mere expedient adopted for a passing 
difficulty. Henceforth the name of Florence 
Nightingale is dear and familiar in our house- 
holds, — women glory in her, men rise up and 
call her blessed. " I have received," said Mr. 
Sidney Herbert, speaking from his place in 
Parliament, " not only from medical men, but 
from many others who have had an oppor- 
tunity of making observations, letters couched 
in the highest possible terms of praise. I will 
not repeat the words, but no higher words 
of praise could be applied to women, for 
the wonderful energy, the wonderful tact, 
the wonderful tenderness, combined with the 
extraordinary seK-devotion which have been 
displayed by ]\Iiss Nightingale ; and I am 
glad to say that the characteristics w^iich 
have been shown by that lady, the force and 



i 



4 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 121 

influence of her character, seem to have pene- 
trated all those working with her, and I 
believe, not only the patients themselves, but 
every person connected with the hospital, will 
be benefited by the admixture of this new 
element in the management of a military 
hospital." It will extend yet farther, as I 
hope and believe ; to results incalculable and 
certainly not contemplated, when that band 
of sisters, accompanied by tears, prayers, and 
blessings, departed from our shores to the far 
East. We are told of the burst of gratitude 
with which they were received. " Now we 
know that our country cares for us ! " was the 
exclamation of one of the poor fellows. I do 
not think it right to tell here all I could tell 
on the subject of these excellent and high- 
hearted women, all the difficulties they have 
had to contend with and have surmounted, 
all the feelings they have awakened of grati- 
tude and veneration; of death-beds comforted 
and hallowed, of wandering and distempered 
spirits recalled and healed — no — I cannot ! 
it is all too sacred and too present to us to be 
spoken of yet; — nor should I feel justified in 
11 



122 SISTERS OF CHAFaTY, 

repeating what has been privately and con- 
fidentially communicated. What has been 
published in the newspapers has probably 
been read and re-read with hearts burning 
within them, by every one now listening to 
me; — but one or two passages in reference 
to the general good effected, I may be allowed 
to cite. 

Mr. Stafford, in his attack on the late min- 
istry, made at least one especial exception to 
their misdeeds, — on one point he gave to Mr. 
Sidney Herbert most deserved praise. " He 
congratulated the Secretary at War on the 
sending out of the female nurses last autumn. 
Success more complete had never attended 
human efforts, than that which had resulted 
from this excellent measure. They could 
scarcely realize, without personally seeing it, 
the heartfelt gratitude of the soldiers to these 
noble ladies, or the amount of misery they 
had relieved, or the degree of comfort, — he 
might say of joy, — they had diffused; and it 
was impossible to do justice, not only to the 
kindness of heart, but to the clever judgment, 



ABROAD AND AT HOME, 123 

ready intelligence, and experience displayed 
by the distinguished lady to whom this diffi- 
cult nriission had been intrusted. If Scutari 
was not altogether as we could wish it to 
be, it was because of the inadequate powers 
confided to Miss Nightingale ; and if the 
Government did not stand by her and her 
devoted band, and repel unfounded and un- 
generous attacks made upon them, — if it did 
not consult their wishes and yield to their su- 
perior judgment in many respects, — it would 
deserve the execration of the public." Strong 
language this ! but excusable from one who 
spoke with glowing heart of what he had 
seen ! — listened to with sympathy, and re- 
sponded to with cheers by generous men and 
gentlemen. 

Another speaker on the same side expresses 
his belief that even the mere presence and 
superintendence of gentle w^ell-educated wo- 
men would be morally beneficial. I recollect 
that it was said at first, that not only the 
medical attendants but the sick and suffering 
would be quite uncomfortably " embarrassed " 



124 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

by this innovation ; but if a cessation of coarse 
language, if better feelings, if more self-con- 
trol, arise from patients and orderlies being 
" embarrassed " by the presence and ministra- 
tion of superior women, I conceive that it will 
not be an evil but a benefit, and one that will 
not, in all cases, cease with the hour of suffer- 
ing. We may at least hope that a man who 
has been thus tended by gentle and superior fll 
beings of the other sex, will hardly be so ready 
as heretofore to make women the victims of 
his levity or brutality ; what he did not spare 
for the sake of mother or sister, he may per- 
haps, in some hour of temptation and selfish 
impulse, spare for the sake of those who bent 
over him w^hen " pain and anguish wrung the 
brow," and whispered low the solemn words 
of peace, of patience, of divine hope and 
comfort, while laying the pillow under a poor 
fellow's rough head, or holding the cup to his 
parched lips. As woman, even because she is 
woman, feels all the healing and strengthen- 
ing power which lies in the man's mind, and 
in cases of severe physical or moral suffering, 
throws herself with almost helpless confi- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 125 

dence on her priest or her physician, — so it is 
with man : — he softens under the influence of 
a softer nature, he confesses a healing power 
in the organism which was created thus to 
refresh, restore, and purify his own, and yields 
to woman where he would not yield to one of 
his own sex. This I believe to be a simple 
universal physiological law, not yet recognized 
in all its bearings. To borrow a happy illus- 
tration from Mr. Macaulay, — he asks, some- 
where, " In how many months would the first 
human beings who settled on the shores of 
the ocean have been justified in believing that 
the moon had an influence on the tides?" and 
I may ask, for how many more centuries shall 
we stand on the shores of the great ocean of 
life without knowing under what near or 
remote mysterious influences its floods rise or 
fall, are moved to disturbance or hushed to 
tranquillity ? 

I am acquainted with an army surgeon 

whose regiment, a few years since, was ordered 

to India. Almost immediately on landing, 

numbers of the men were attacked by cholera. 
11* 



126 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

They were prostrated one after another, — 
sank, — died, almost as much from terror and 
despair as from the disease itself. As the 
senior surgeon, my friend felt deeply his re- 
sponsibility, — as a humane man he felt for the 
suffering of his men. He had exhausted all 
the resources of his art, but the disease was 
spreading fearfully. One morning, on coming 
home to his wife, after visiting the hospital, 
he said, " I don't know what to do with my 
poor fellows, — they wring my very heart, — 
they are dying of faint-heartedness as much 
as anything else ! " " Suppose," said she, " I 
were to go and see them, — would it do any 
good ? " " Well," he replied, with tears in his 
eyes, " I should not have asked it of you, but, 
as you offer it, I think it would do good." 
She threw on her dressing-gown, and repaired 
at once to the hospital. Leaning on her hus- 
band's arm, she walked through the wards 
where the sick and dying lay crowded to- 
gether ; — she spoke kind and cheerful words 
to those who could hear her, and they seemed 
to revive under the influence of her presence. 
She continued her visits daily. The most 




ABROAD AND AT HOME. 127 

despairing took comfort, men whose condition 
seemed hopeless recovered. They thought, 
they even said, " It is not so bad with us if 
she can come among us!" They watched 
for her coming, and received her, when she 
came, with blessings : and the ravages of 
the disease were from that time allayed. 
Now there is nothing extraordinary in all 
this; hundreds of such instances might be 
recorded ; some example of the kind will 
probably start into the recollection of many 
who listen to me ; but such facts have never 
been brought together, and considered in the 
abstract as illustrating a principle, or as 
substantiating a truth, — a most important 
principle, and a most vital truth ; they re- 
main, consequently, isolated facts, strongly 
exciting our sympathy and interest ; and 
nothing more. 

I have met with Protestant Sisters of Char- 
ity, — very many, — who did not assume that 
name for themselves. I will mention one 
instance. She was a lady, a foreigner, not 
merely of good birth, but of high and titled 



128 

rank. She had begun life in a court; she had 
been dame d^honneur to a briUiant princess. 
Certain events, on which I have no right to 
dwell, clouded her youth, and gave her the 
wish to devote herself wholly to the service 
of the wretched. She consulted a well-known 
physician, who looked upon her resolve as a 
mere fit of excitement, and reasoned strongly 
against it. Finding this in vain, he thought 
to shock her delicate nerves by assigning to her 
at first some of the most trying, most revolting 
duties of a hospital. The effect was the re- 
verse of what he had expected. The near 
spectacle of suffering w^liich she had power 
to aid and alleviate, the perception of certain 
evils she might have the power to reform or 
at least ameliorate, only made her more re- 
solved, and she quietly took her vocation upon 
her and pursued it steadily. The first time I 
saw this lady she was seated in the garden of 
a mutual friend. It was a beautiful summer 
evening ; she had finished her day's work, 
and her later duties had not commenced. 
She was sitting on a bench knitting, with a 
cup of coffee beside her, dressed with great 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 



129 



simplicity, but without peculiarity ; her face 
was grave, but when she looked up to speak 
it brightened into a ready smile. She had at 
that time pursued her vocation, unfaltering in 
courage and perseverance, for sixteen years ; 
she had introduced, as I was told, many 
salutary reforms into the hospitals she had 
attended, and exercised, wherever she went, a 
beneficent influence. 

Mr. Sidney Herbert, in requesting the assist- 
ance of Miss Nightingale, after using some 
arguments drawn even from that task " full of 
horror " to which he invited her, — arguments 
which no woman at once capable and tender- 
hearted could have resisted, — alludes to more 
remote but probable results following on her 
conduct. He says truly : — "If this succeed, 
an enormous amount of good wall be done 
now, and to persons deserving everything at 
our hands ; and a prejudice will be broken 
through and a precedent established which 
will multiply the good to all time." 

No doubt; but it will be through the pa- 



130 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

tience, faith, and wisdom of men and women 
working together. In an undertaking so wholly- 
new to our English customs, so much at vari- 
ance with the usual education given to women 
in this country, we shall meet with perplexities, 
difficulties, even failures. All the ladies who 
have gone to Scutari may not tm'n out heroines. 
There may be vain babblings and scribblings 
and indiscretions, such as may put weapons 
into adverse hands. The inferior and paid 
nurses may, some of them, have carried to 
Scutari bad habits arising from imperfect 
training. Still let us trust that a principle 
will be recognized in this country which will 
not be again lost sight of. It will be the true, 
the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and 
her band of devoted assistants, that they have 
broken through what Goethe calls a " Chinese 
wall of prejudices;" prejudices religious, so- 
cial, professional ; and established a precedent 
which will indeed " multiply the good to all 
time." No doubt there are hundreds of women 
who would now gladly seize the privileges held 
out to them by such an example, and crowd 
to offer their services : but would they pay 



/ 

ABROAD AND AT HOME. 131 

the price for such dear and high privileges ? 
Would they fit themselves duly for the per- 
formance of such services, and earn, by dis- 
tasteful and even painful studies, the necessary 
certificates for skill and capacity? Would 
they, like Miss Nightingale, go through a 
seven years' probation, to try at once the 
steadiness of their motives and the steadiness 
of their nerves ? Such a trial is absolutely 
necessary, for hundreds of women will fall into 
the common error of mistaking an impulse for 
a vocation. But I do believe that there are 
also hundreds who are fitted, or would gladly, 
at any self-sacrifice, fit themselves, for the 
work, if the means of doing so were allowed 
to them. At present an English lady has no 
facilities whatever for obtaining the informa- 
tion or experience required ; no such institu- 
tions are open to her, and yet she is ridiculed 
for presenting herself without the competent 
knowledge ! This seems hardly just. 

The horrors of war which have called forth 
so noble a display of the best capabilities of 
women, are accidents in the world's history ; 



132 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

but the capabilities so called forth are not 
accidental, nor will they cease with the occa- 
sion. They are intrinsic and essential and 
ever at hand, though hidden under a mass 
of cruel conventionalities, like those precious 
drugs and medicaments, which, as we are told, 
were stowed away under heaps of shell, shot, 
and gunpowder. Having once discovered 
their treasures, men have now to use them. 
War will cease, but here at home, the need of 
women's active intelligence and tenderness to 
alleviate a mass of social evils, will not cease. 
The time is surely coming when we shall 
know how to apply such material better than 
we have yet done. The time is surely coming 
when private charity will not be so often de- 
sultory, capricious, misdirected, meddlesome, 
and unwelcome ; when public charity will not 
be worked like a steam power, through mere 
official mechanism, but by human sympathies, 
cheerful, wise, and tender. The contributions 
poured into the magistrates' poor-box on every 
public appeal, the distribution of blankets and 
flannels, and soup, and all creature comforts, 
are in themselves things excellent and season- 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 133 

able, and worthy of all imitation ; but should 
this be the only intercourse between those 
who give and those who want? — those who 
pity and those who suffer? The love that 
works for our good should elicit love in return, 
or it is nothing but a machine. Such is not 
God's love to us, whose highest benefit it is 
that it awakens our responsive love for him, 
and makes us better through that love. 
Should we not also endeavor to make our 
fellow-creatures better through our charity, to 
touch the nature and make it respond to our 
own, till there shall be more of mutual faith 
and comprehension, as well as a more diffused 
sympathy through the different orders of so- 
ciety ? 

An institution such as I have in my mind, 
should be a place where women could obtain a 
sort of professional education under professors 
of the other sex, — for men are the best in- 
structors of women; — where they might be 
trained as hospital and village nurses, visitors 
of the poor, and teachers in the elementary 
and reformatory schools; so that a certain 
12 



134 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

number of Avomen should always be found 
ready and competent to undertake such work 
in our public charitable and educational insti- 
tutions as should be fitted for them ; — I say 
fitted for them, and for which by individual 
capacity and inclination they should be fitted^ 
and that corresponding fitness tested by a 
rather lengthened probation and a strict exam- 
ination. It seems rather unjust to sneer at a 
woman's unfitness for certain high duties, 
domestic and social, unless the possibility of 
obtaining better instruction be afforded. All 
the unmarried and widowed women of the 
working classes cannot be sempstresses and 
governesses ; nor can all the unmarried women 
of the higher classes find in society and visit- 
ing, literature and art, the purpose, end, and 
aim of their existence. We have works of 
love and mercy for the best of our women to 
do, in our prisons and hospitals, our reforma- 
tory schools, and I will add our workhouses ; * 

* " A principal reason of the cleanliness and order of the 
workhouses in Holland, is the attention and humanity of the 
gOYernesses, for each house has four, who take charge of the 
inspection, and have their names painted in the room." — 
{Howard on Prisons, 3d edit. 1784, p. 48.) 

*' The workhouses at Amsterdam were under the direction 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 135 

but then we must have them such as we want 
them, — not impelled by transient feelings, but 
by deep abiding motives, — not amateur ladies 
of charity, but brave women, whose vocation 
is fixed, and whose faculties of every kind have 
been trained and disciplined to their work 
under competent instruction from men, and 
tested by a long probation. 

It will be said, perhaps, that when you thus 

train a woman's instinctive feelings of pity 

and tenderness for a particular purpose, to act 

under control and in concert with others, you 

of six regents (governors) and four governesses, wlio appoint- 
ed under them two « fathers,' and two ' mothers,' (overseers), 
whose business it was to superintend the work, diet, and 
lodging of the inmates," &c. (p. 59.) 

** The regents {i. e., governors of the houses of correction) 
have a room in which they assemble once a fortnight. Their 
ladies assemble in another room to give directions concerning 
the week's linen, provisions, &c. 

" They (the governesses) also attend by rotation at dinner 
and at other times, and their accounts are carried to the 
regents. ' ' 

In these days the order and cleanliness which Howard so 
admired are not wanting in our workhouses; but some ele- 
ments arc wanting, such as judicious and refined and truly 
religious and kind-hearted women would alone supply. 

[Since the above note was written I have received a very 
benevolent and sensible letter on the subject of female super- 
vision in workhouses, which I am sorry I cannot insert 
here.] 



136 SISTER? OF CHARITY, 

take away their spontaneousness, their grace, 
even in some sort their sincerity ; consequently 
their power to work good. This is like the 
reasoning of my Uncle Toby, who, in describ- 
ing the Beguines. says. •• They visit and take 
care of the sick by profession ; hut I had 
rather, for my own part, that they did it out 
of good nature.'' ^Vould Uncle Toby have 
admitted the necessary inference. — namely, 
thai when you train and discipline a man to 
be a soldier, to sen'e in the ranks, and obey 
orders under pain of being shot, you take 
away his valor, his manly strength, his power 
to use his weapon ? We know it is not so. 
Never yet did the sense of duty diminish the 
force of one generous impulse in man or 
woman! — that sublimest of bonds, when in 
harmony with our true ijistincts, intensifies 
while it directs them. 

There are many other objections and obsta- 
cles, lying in our onward path, of which I 
cannot dissemble the masfuitude. There is in 
this country a sort of scrupulousness about 
interfering with the individual ^sill, which 




ABROAD AND AT HOME. 137 

renders it peculiarly difficult to make numbers 
work together unless disciplined as you would 
discipline a. regiment. The obvious want of 
discipline and organization in our civil service, 
has been a source of difficulties, and even of 
fatal mistakes in the commencement of this 
war. In any community of reasonable beings, 
therefore in any community of women, as of 
men, there must be gradations of capacity,* 
and difference of work. 



* " Many years ago, during a residence in Warrington, — 
at that period the seat of a number of branches of industry 
demanding artistic skill, as the manufacture of flint glass, of 
files, and of all kinds of tools, — when sitting one night by 
the fire of a tool-maker, I was struck by the beauty of the 
small files, yices, and other tools used in watch-making. 
Knowing that he employed apprentices, I asked if he found that 
they all had the steady patience, the clearness of sight, and 
delicacy of hand required for such work; to which he replied, 
that not half attained the skill to qualify them, at the end of 
their term, for journeymen; that some gave up the attempt 
to learn the branch, and went to another; that others, who 
completed their apprenticeship, if they remained, got employ- 
ment only when trade was brisk ; when it was slack they were 
the first to be discharged; whilst others, again, became 
laborers, that is, served the skilful liands. 

" I next inquired of a glass manufacturer, himself originally 
a workman, what proportion, apprenticed to the flint-glass 
making, were worth retaining as journeymen ; when he repli- 
ed : — ' Out of ten apprenticed, not three proved good hands; 
the others mostly fall to the lower branches, as tending the 

12* . 



138 

To make or require vows of obedience is 
objectionable ; yet we know that the voluntary- 
furnaces and the like; a certain number, too, are retained in 
the place of boys, that is, as the glass-blowers' assistants : but 
when fresh apprentice lads are taken, or when trade is slack, 
these inferior hands are sure to be dismissed.' In respect to 
glass-cutting, he said, that probably not half the apprentices 
turn out expert ; that they drop away out of the branch ; but he 
was unable to say to what else they betook themselves. With 
the same object I continued, in subsequent years, to inquire of 
master shoemakers, tailors, letter-press printers, bookbinders, 
and of masters in other trades demanding dexterity and skill, 
and have found that a considerable proportion of those put to 
acquire such branches either fail to do so and drop lower, or 
they remain in them and are known by the name of botchers. 
In this way the descent of numbers in every trade goes on 
continually, and shows an inequality in mankind, as to tal- 
ents, that will ever baffle the hopes of those enthusiastic 
reformers who, in their schemes, or rather dreams, of social 
improvement, overlook this natural diversity, and who would 
regard all the individuals composing the laboring class as 
entitled to share in the fruits of labor." — ''I refer to natural 
inequality, for which there is no help, — as distinguished 
from culpable inequality, the effect of evil passions and 
tempers which generate habits injurious or even completely 
obstructive to success in life." — {On Municipal Govern- 
ment,) 

A wisely organized system of work, — intellectual and 
moral as well as mechanical work, — provides for this nat- 
ural inequality, and does not place human beings in positions 
which they are naturally unable to fill with advantage to 
themselves or others; and that would be a strange law which 
should oblige a master manufacturer to employ botchers in 
the place of skilled workmen because they present themselves, 
and because they also have a right to live by their work. 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 139 

nurses who went to the East were called upon 
to do what comes to the same thing, — to 
sign an engagement to obey implicitly a con- 
trolling and administrative power, — or the 
whole undertaking must have fallen to the 
ground. Then, again, questions about cos- 
tume have been mooted which appear to me 
wonderfully absurd. It has been suggested 
that there should be something of a unifor- 
mity and fitness in the dress worn when on 
duty, and this seems but reasonable. I recol- 
lect once seeing a lady in a gay light muslin 
dress, with three or four flounces, and roses 
under her bonnet, going forth to visit her sick 
poor. The incongruity struck the mind pain- 
fully, — not merely as an incongruity, but as 
an impropriety, like a soldier going to the 
trenches in opera hat and laced ruffles. Such 
follies, arising from individual obtuseness, 
must be met by regulations dictated by good 
sense, and submitted to as a matter of neces- 
sity and obligation. 

But it is not my intention to go into any 
of these minor points of discipline and ques- 



140 SISTERS OF CHARITY, 

tions of detail. One great object has been 
achieved, — a principle has been admitted, 
a precedent has been established, of female 
labor organized for noble pm'poses of public 
utility, approved by public opinion, guided 
and assisted by man's more comprehensive 
intellect, sustained and sanctioned by the 
authority of the ruling powers. All schemes 
for the public good, in which men and women 
do not work in communion, have in them the 
seeds of change, discord, and decay. Some 
time ago Miss Bremer (the Swedish author- 
ess) planned a sort of universal feminine 
coalition, — a sort of female corresponding 
society for sundry pious and charitable pur- 
poses. Her plan virtually excluded the co- 
operation of the masculine brain, thus dividing 
what Nature herself has decreed should never 
be disunited without mischief, the element of 
power and the element of love. The idea was 
simply absurd and necessarily impracticable. 
Such an association of one half of the human 
species in an attitude of independence as re- 
gards the other, would have excited a spirit 
of antagonism in the men ; and among the 



ABROAD AND AT HOME. 141 

women, would have speedily degenerated into 
a gossiping, scribbling, stitching community, 
unstable as water ; and nothing more need be 
said of it here, except that it fully deserved 
the witty rebuke it met with, though not solely 
nor chiefly on the alleged grounds. 

And now I may leave the question at the 
point to which I have brought it. I will only 
add that the history of the past, of the pos- 
sible, of the actually accomplished, which I 
have here rapidly sketched out, should give 
us courage in the present and hope for the 
future. 

It is a subject of reproach that in this 
Christendom of ours, the theory of good 
which we preach should be so far in advance 
of our practice ; but that which provokes the 
sneer of the skeptic and almost kills faith in 
the sufferer, lifts up the contemplative mind 
with hope. Man's theory of good is God's 
reality; man's experience, is the degree to 
which he has already worked out, in his 
human capacity, that divine reality. There- 



142 SISTERS OF CHARITY. 

fore, whatever our practice may be, let us hold 
fast to our theories of possible good ; let us 
at least, however they outrun our present 
powers, keep them in sight, and then our 
formal lagging practice may in time overtake 
them. In social morals as well as in physical 
truths, '' The goal of yesterday will be the 
starting-point of to-morrow;" and the things 
before which all England now stands in 
admiring wonder will become "the simple 
produce of the common day." Thus we hope 
and believe. 



1 



THE 

COMMUNION or LABOR; 

A SECOND LECTURE 

ON THE 

SOCIAL EMPLOYMENTS OF WOMEN 



« At last 

She rose upon a wind of prophecy, 
Dilating on the future : — ' Everywhere 
Two heads in council ; two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world. 
Two in the liberal offices of life.' " 

Tennyson. 



PREFACE. 

When the following Lecture was delivered, 
on the 28th of last June, more than one half 
was omitted, in consequence of its too great 
length. The idea of dividing it into two 
separate Lectures was abandoned, for reasons 
which it is unnecessary to state here. It is 
now printed as it was originally written, with 
some additional notes and details. It must be 
considered, on the whole, as merely supplemen- 
tary to the Lecture on " Sisters of Charity," 
published last year; as an illustration and 
expansion, through facts and examples, of the 
principles there briefly set forth, — namely, that 
a more equal distribution of the work which 
has to be done, and a more perfect communion 
of interests in the work which is done, arc, 
18 



146 PREFACE. 

in the present state of society, imperatively 
demanded. 

This Lecture, having been delivered orally 
to a circle of friends, has unconsciously as- 
sumed a somewhat egotistical tone and form, 
which the reader is entreated kindly to excuse, 
and to remember that its intention is not to 
dictate, but merely to suggest. 

August 17, 1856. 



CONTENTS. 



THE INFUENCE OF LEGISLATION ON THE MORALS AND 

HAPPINESS OF MEN AND WOMEN . .153 

THE COMMMUION OF LABOR IN SANITARY, EDUCATION- 
AL, REFORMATORY, AND PENAL INSTITUTIONS . 169 
HOSPITALS ..... 173 

PRISONS ...... 199 

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS . . . .211 

PENITENTIARIES . . . . .216 

WORKHOUSES ..... 228 

EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF WOMEN FOR SOCIAL 

EMPLOYMENTS .... 255 

WORKING FOR HIRE AND WORKING FOR LOVE . 274 

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES . . . ,281 

RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES .... 286 

CONCLUSION ..... 297 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR: 

A SECOND LECTURE ON THE SOCIAL EMPLOY- 
MENTS OF WOxMEN. 

{Delivered privately June 2Sth, 1856, and printed by desire.) 

It is nearly a year and a half since my 
friends gathered round me and listened very 
kindly and patiently to certain suggestions 
relative to the social employments of women, 
more especially as " Sisters of Charity, at 
home and abroad. " The views I then advo- 
cated had been long in my mind : but great 
events, at that time recent, and coming home 
to all hearts, had rendered the exposition of 
those views more seaonable, more interesting, 
perhaps also more intelligible, than they would 
otherwise have been. 

The publication of that Lecture having at- 
tracted more attention than I had reason to 
expect, and having given rise to some dis- 
cussion, public and private, I have been 



150 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

advised, and have taken courage, once more, 
and probably for the last time^ to recur to the 
same subject. It is a subject which, if it be 
worth any attention whatever, is worth the 
most serious and solemn consideration; for it 
concerns no transient, no partial interest, lying 
on the surface of life, but rather the very stiifF 
of which life is made. Some new obser- 
vations, some additional facts, I have to com- 
mnnicate, which, while they illustrate the 
principles laid down in my former Lecture, 
will, I hope, add force to niy arguments. 
These observations, these facts, will not at 
once overcome all objections, will not in the 
first instance meet with any thing like general 
acceptance; but they vdYL perhaps open up 
new sources of thought; and if thought lead 
to inquiry, and inquiry lead to conviction — for 
or against — I should be content to abide that 
issue. 

The questions as yet unsettled seem to be 
these : — 

Whether a more enlarged sphere of social 
work may not be allowed to woman in perfect 



QUESTIONS TO BE DiSCUSSED. 151 

accordance with the truest feminine instincts ? 
Whether there be not a possibility of her shar- 
ing practically in the responsibilities of social 
as well as domestic life ? "Whether she might 
not be better prepared to meet and exercise 
such higher responsibilities ? And whether 
such a communion of labor might not lead to 
the more humane ordering of many of our 
public institutions, to a purer standard of 
morals, to a better mutual comprehension and 
a finer harmony between men and w^omen, 
when thus called upon to work together, and 
(in combining what is best in the two natures) 
becoming what God intended them to be, the 
supplement to each other ? 

Let it not be supposed that I am about to 
enter an arena of public strife. For any truth 
in which I believe, I could suffer — no matter 
what — or die if need were, yet feel that I 
could scarcely strike a blow, far less inflict a 
wound. Conflict, which rouses up the best 
and highest powers in some characters, in 
others not only jars the whole being, but par- 
alzycs the faculties. This, of course, is a mere 



152 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

matter of individual temperament ; yet, on the 
whole, in looking back to the history of human 
progress, I doubt whether any great truth was 
ever much advanced by conflict, still less by 
compromise. The hardest battle ever fought 
for truth left some doubt as to which side had 
the advantage ; and those who have conceded 
or sacrificed some portion of the truth by way 
of securing some other portion (a favorite ex- 
pedient with politicians who call themselves 
practical), have not, I think, been successful 
in their piecemeal morality, or their piecemeal 
legislation. Let us accept gratefully some 
portion of what we believe to be just, if we 
cannot yet obtain the whole ; but that is quite 
different from conceding any portion of a prin- 
ciple. We shall, meantime, do well to take 
our stand on the highest point we can attain 
to, beyond the reach of the tempest and the 
conflict which agitate the waves of fashion 
and opinion. At last, the rising flood will 
bring to our side those who have been swim- 
ming with the current or struggling in the 
turmoil ; catching at every stray fragment of 
popular doctrine which floated past them at 



SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN. 153 

the level of their eye, and holding it up as if 
they had rescued from the deep some priceless 
truth. These deceptions they have dropped 
one by one, and now we have them beside us : 
they have planted their foot where we have 
planted ours. We are no longer lonely, and 
we have been ever at peace with ourselves 
and others ; seemingly passive to falsehood, 
but in reality steadfast in faith ; — and this is 
better than strife. 

But ere I proceed farther, there is one point 
on which I am anxious not to be misunder- 
stood, one consideration which I am desirous 
to place on its true grounds in reference to 
my present subject, — the social position and 
occupations of women. 

" Gagnez les femmes," said one of the 
acutest of modern politicians when giving 
his last instructions to an ambassador. " We 
write in vain if we have not the women on 
our side," said one of the poets of our own 
time ; and wo women know full well that we 
must think, and write, and speak in vain with- 
out the sanction of the manly intellect, — with- 



154 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

out the sympathy of the manly heart. At this 
moment I feel assured of both as I have never 
felt before. 

It ought to give us courage and comfort to 
know that the laws relating to property and 
marriage, which have hitherto pressed so heav- 
ily on the well-being and happiness of one 
half of the community, are under the considera- 
tion of wise and able men, and may be safely 
left in their hands. We may have to wait 
long for those practical measures of justice 
which are contemplated, but we can afford to 
wait, now that the injustice has been openly 
acknowledged by philosophical statesmen and 
experienced lawyers. There still exist, how- 
ever, some singular misconceptions, both as 
to the existing evil and the remedy required ; 
and the expression of opinion and feeling in 
public and in private which has arisen out 
of the late discussion of these laws in both 
Houses of Parliament, has been very curious 
and conflicting. 

We must acknowledge, that a law which 
should forbid a woman to give all she has to 
give to the man she loves and trusts, though 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF LAWS. 155 

to her own perdition, would be certainly a very 
foolish and a very useless law. Whether the 
concession be from impulse, or devotedness, or 
pity, or ignorance, she must abide by her own 
act ; it must rest on her own conscitoce. But 
the law which punishes, with extreme severity, 
the man who takes from her by force what she 
desires to withhold, is a just and righteous law. 
So, in regard to property, a law which should 
interdict the woman from giving all her pos- 
sessions and earnings, if she chooses, to her 
husband, would be a foolish and a useless 
law : in this case, as in the other, she must 
abide by her own act, and its consequences. 
But the law which empowers her husband to 
take away all she may possess, or may have 
earned by her labor, against her will and to 
her destruction, is surely cruel. Again, a law 
which should give to the wife the independent 
administration of her property, and at the 
same time leave her husband responsible for 
her debts, would be equally foolish and cruel. 
These seem to be clear and simple principles 
of justice which will be carried out sooner or 
later, though the legal details at this present 



156 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



time may be complicated by difficulties arising 
out of existing laws.* 

But I must here distinctly explain that, 
when asked to place my name to a petition 
against the present marital laws of property, 
I did so, with no special reference to their 
practical effect in particular instances, but 
merely as I would protest against any other 
manifest injustice, either in . regard to men 
or women, or both. The truth is, that far 
beyond the palpable, visible working of these 
laws, cruel as they are in individual cases, 
lies an infinitely more fatal mischief in their 
injurious effect on the masses of the people. 
What matter how such laws act here or 
there, — how far they are to be excused as 
expedient, or to be sustained by custom, — 



*A woman seldom generalizes. Put the question before 
her, whether a wife should have some control over her own 
earnings, she exclaims, " Not for the world ! I leave all these 
things to Fred ; Fred understands monej-matters, and ac- 
counts, and all that ; and it is such a pleasure to owe every- 
thing to him ! " Of course we sympathize with the wife, her 
Fred standing for all mankind, and her own position for that 
of all women : meantime how does it fare with her poor 
working sister in the neighboring alley ? for that also is to be 
considered. 



MORAL INFLUENCE OF LAWS. 157 

how easily they may be evaded by one class, 
though they fall heavily on another ? — what 
signifies all this if they permeate, and in some 
sort vitiate, the relations of the two sexes 
throughout the whole community ? The direct 
action of such laws may be confined to the 
conjugal relation ; but the indirect action, as 
reflected in feeling and opinion, operates on all, 
married and unmarried. These observations 
refer merely to their practical effects ; but not 
even those who plead for their expediency in 
a complex commercial community, where the 
question of property enters into all relations 
and contracts, and can hardly be touched 
without danger or at least disturbance, deny 
the abstract injustice of such laws. Now 
every injustice is a form of falsehood, every 
falsehood accepted and legalized, works in 
the social system like poison in the physical 
frame, and may taint the whole body politic 
through and through, ere we have learned in 
what quivering nerve or delicate tissue to 
trace and detect its fatal presence. Human 
laws which contravene the laws of God, are 
not laws, but lies; and, like all lies, must perish 
14 



158 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

in the long run. But there was a saying 
of a clever politician, that a lie believed in 
but for half an hour might cause a century 
of mischief. What then, I would ask, is 
likely to be the effect of these laws which 
have existed as part of our common law for 
centuries past, — laws which may well be 
called lies, inasmuch as they suppose a state 
of things which has no real existence in the 
divine regulation of the world ? — laws which 
during all that period have tended to degrade 
the woman in the eyes of the man, interfered 
with the sacredness of the domestic relations, 
and infected the whole social system ? 

I regard the existence of these laws as the 
source of especial and fatal mischief. I look 
upon them as one cause why it is difficult for 
men and women to work together harmoni- 
ously ; — how can it be otherwise where the 
conditions under which they must be asso- 
ciated are, in the first instance, so unequal as 
to be almost antagonistic ? I look upon these 
laws as one cause of prostitution, because, in 
so far as they have lowered the social position 
of the woman, they have lowered the value of 



LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 



159 



her labor, and have thus exposed her to want 
and temptation, which would not otherwise 
have existed.^ 

Farther, I consider these laws, in so far as 
they have influenced the mutual relations of 
the two sexes, as one cause of those outrages 
on women which are every day brought before 
the magistrates, to the disgrace of our civilized 
England. 

And is it not rather absurd at this time of 
day to devise, as an antidote to the working 
of these laws, another law, really as unjust in 
its way, which punishes a man for ill treating 
the creature he has been authorized to regard 
as his inferior ? Every act of our legislation 
which takes for granted antagonism, not 
harmony, between the masculine and the 
feminine nature, has tended to create that 

* This at least is the opinion of a man of large experience, 
Mr. F. Hill, for many years inspector of prisons. He observes 
that the sin and misery alluded to would probably be greatly 
diminished " if public opinion no longer upheld the exclusive 
spirit by which most of the lucrative employments are re- 
stricted to the male sex, whereby the difficulties with whicli 
females have to contend in earning an honest livelihood are 
greatly increased." — Crime, its Amount, Causes, and Reme- 
dies, by F. Hill, Inspector of Prisons. 



160 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



antagonism. Every act of our legislature, 
which, on the one hand, first legalizes wrong, 
and then, on the other hand, interposes with 
legal protection against that wrong, must 
appear to simple, honest minds, a very cruel 
and clumsy anomaly. By this perpetual, 
absurd alternation of legalized wrong and 
legalized vengeance for the wrong, you de- 
moralize relatively both men and women ; — 
the woman in the sight of the man as the 
licensed victim, the man in the sight of the 
woman as the chastised tyrant. 

I cannot but think that those good men, — 
prelates, fathers, and lawyers, — who watch 
over and guard the public morality, and are 
so fearful lest the harmony and purity of 
domestic life should suffer by any change 
in those laws, — I cannot but think them, 
with submission, mistaken, and that they 
take but a one-sided and short-sighted view 
of a most awful subject. I cannot but think 
that by the abrogation of those laws which 
have disturbed the divine equilibrium in the 
relation between the sexes, they would do 
more for the morality of men and the 



LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 161 

protection of women, than by punishing 
hundreds of brutal husbands.* 

Wise men have doubted whether there 



* In the North British Review for last June, there is an 
excellent article on wife-beating, its causes, and its remedies. 
Among the causes adduced, the influence of existing laws on 
the morals and the feelings of the lower classes is not express- 
ly mentioned, but it is implied, I think, in the following 
passage : — 

" Tender, considerate, self-sacrificing, caressing on the one 
hand, violent , selfish, brutal on the other, man treats his 
helpmate as a child or an invalid, incapable of self-assertion 
and self-defence, indeed of all independent action, and there- 
fore an object of deference and attention, to be humored and 
indulged, to be aided and supported; or else as an inferior 
animal, strong in endurance, to be buifeted, and persecuted, 
and outraged, and humiliated, and made to suffer every kind 
of wrong. Now, all this doubtless arises from the one 
common feeling that woman is the ' weaker vessel. ' As is 
man's conception of the purposes and uses of strength, so is 
his treatnient of woman either of a defensive or an offensive 
character. In either case, there is an overweening sense of 
his own superiority, the practical expression of which, what- 
ever its intent, is degrading to the other sex. We are very 
far from any disposition to assert that the two extremes of 
defensiveness and offensiveness are equal evils ; it may seem, 
indeed, to be something of a paradox to place them in the 
same category; but they are evils which, though differing in 
degree, arise from the same cause and tend to the same 
result; both indicate and perpetuate the weakness of woman. 
To start from one's seat or rush across a room to pick up a 
woman's pocket-handkerchief, or to open a door for her, is a 
very different thing from knocking her down and stamping 
upon her; but both acts originate in the same sense of man's 
14* 



162 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

ought to be separate laws concerning women, 
as such ; and scout with reason such phrases 
as the rights of ivomen and the wrongs of 
women, I have always had such an intimate 
conviction of the absurdity of such phrases, 
that I believe I never used them seriously in 
my life. In a free country, and a Christian 
community, a woman has the rights which 
belong to her as a human being, and as a 
member of the community, and she has no 

superiority, and tend to perpetuate woman's weakness : tlie 
one is a blunder, the other a crime." 

I quite agree with the writer that the substitution of 
flogging for imprisonment, as the more immediate and de- 
grading punishment of the two, however well deserved, would 
fail in its effect, and that a woman who, under the present 
law, makes her complaint with extreme reluctance, under a 
law of retaliation will not make it at all : and she is right. 
The general impression which exists, that even the women of 
the lowest grade will not avail themselves of the protection 
of the law under such conditions, shows us the nature of the 
creature, though the coarse, the cruel, and the vengeful be 
found among them. In fact, the remedy lies deeper than 
law can reach. The writer observes, in conclusion : *' What 
is wanted indeed most of all, is something that will make it 
less a necessity with women to unite themselves legally or 
illegally with the other sex. In a large number of cases, 
what a woman most looks for in matrimony or concubinage 
is a bread-finder. The example is set by the higher classes, 
where marriage is looked upon as the end and aim of woman's 
life. What else, it is said, can she do ? " 



LAWS AND CUSTOMS. 163 

others. I think it a dangerous and a fatal 
mistake to legislate on the assumption that 
there are feminine and masculine rights and 
wrongs, just as I deem it a fatal error in 
morals to assume that there are masculine 
and feminine virtues and vices : there are 
masculine and feminine qualities^ wisely and 
beautifully discriminated, but there are not 
masculine and feminine virtues and vices. 
Let us not cheat ourselves by what Mrs. 
Malaprop would call " a nice derangement 
of epithets," lest " a nice derangement " of 
morals ensue thereupon; lest our ideas get 
hopelessly entangled in words, and our princi- 
ples of right and wrong become mystified by 
sentimental phrases. 

Nothing in all my experience of life has 
so shocked me, as the low moral standard of 
one sex for the other, arising, as I believe, 
out of this irreligious mistake. I see, among 
the women of our higher classes, those who 
have lived much in " the world," as it is 
called, a sort of mysterious horror of the 
immorality of men, not as a thing to be 
resisted, or resented, or remedied, but to be 



164 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

submitted to as a sort of fatality and ne- 
cessity (for so it has been instilled into them), 
or guarded against by a mere inefficient 
barricade of conventional proprieties; while 
I see in men of the world a contemptuous 
mistrust of women, an impression of their 
faithlessness, heartlessness, feebleness, equally 
fatal and mistaken. Men are not all sensual 
and selfish ; women are not all false and 
feeble. Women, I am sorry to say it, can 
be sensual and selfish ; men can be false and 
weak ; but then I have known men, manly 
men, with all the tenderness and refinement 
we attribute to women, and I have known 
women who have united with all their own 
soft sympathies and acute perceptions, quite 
a manly strength and sincerity. The union 
is rare; it brings the individual so endowed 
near to our ideal of human perfection ; it is 
what we ought to aim at in all our schemes 
of education. Meantime, let us have what 
is the next best thing, the combination of 
the two natures, the two influences in all 
that we are trying to eflfect for the good of 
the " human family.'^ 



DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL RELATIONS. 165 

I return to the so-called " rights and wrongs 
of women" only to dismiss them at once 
from our thoughts and our subject. Morally a 
woman has a right to the free and entire de- 
velopment of every faculty which God has 
given her to be improved and used to His 
honor. Socially she has a right to the pro- 
tection of equal laws ; the right to labor with 
her hands the thing that is good ; to select the 
kind of labor which is in harmony with her 
condition and her powers ; to exist, if need be, 
by her labor, or to profit others by it if she 
choose. These are her rights, not more nor less 
than the rights of the man. Let us, therefore, 
put aside all futile and unreal distinctions. 
I go back to the principle laid down in my 
former Lecture, and I appeal against human 
laws and customs, to the eternal and immuta- 
ble law of God. When He created all living 
creatures male and female, was it not His will 
that out of this very disparity in unity, this 
likeness in unlikeness, there should spring an 
indissoluble bond of mutual attraction and 
mutual dependence, increasing in degree and 
durability with every advance of sentient life ? 



166 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

And when He raised ns^ His human creatures, 
above mere animal existence, did He not 
make the union, by choice and will, of the 
man and the woman the basis of all domestic 
life ? all domestic life the basis of all social 
life ? all social life the basis of all national 
life? How, then, shall our social and national 
life be pure and holy, and well ordered before 
God and man, if the domestic affections and 
duties be not carried out and expanded, and 
perfected in the larger social sphere, and in 
the same spirit of mutual reverence, trust, and 
kindness which we demand in the primitive 
relation ? It appears to me that when the 
Creator endowed the two halves of the human 
race with ever-aspiring hopes, with ever- 
widening sympathies, with ever-progressing 
capacities, — when He made them equal in the 
responsibilities which bind the conscience and 
in the temptations which mislead the will, — 
He linked them inseparably in an ever-extend- 
ing sphere of duties, and an ever-expanding 
communion of affections ; thus, in one simple, 
hoi}', and beautiful ordinance, binding up at 
once the continuation of the species and its 




DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL RELATIONS. 167 

moral, social, and physical progress, through 
all time. 

Let these premises be granted, and hence 
it follows as a first natural and necessary 
result, and one which the wisest philosophers 
have admitted, that the relative position of 
the man and the woman in any community is 
invariably to be taken as a test of the degree 
of civilization and well-being in that com- 
munity. Hence, as a second result equally 
natural and necessary, we find that all that 
extends and multiplies the innocent relations, 
the kindly sympathies, the mutual services of 
men and women, must lead to the happiness 
and improvement of both. Hence, thirdly] if 
either men or women arrogate to themselves 
exclusively any of the social work or social 
privileges which can be performed or exercised 
perfectly only in communion, they will inev- 
itably fail in their objects, and end probably 
in corrupting each other. Hence, in conclu- 
sion, this last inevitable result ; that wherever 
the nature of either man or woman is consid- 
ered as self-dependent or self-sufEcing, their 
rights and wrongs as distinct, their interests 



168 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



as opposed or even capable of separation, 
there we find cruel and unjust laws, discord 
and confusion entering into all the forms of 
domestic and social life, and the element of 
decay in all our institutions. In the midst of 
our apparent material prosperity, let some 
curious or courageous hand lift up but a 
corner of that embroidered pall which the 
superficial refinement of our privileged and 
prosperous classes has thrown over society, 
and how we recoil from the revelation of what 
lies seething and festering beneath ! How we 
are startled by glimpses of hidden pain, and 
covert vice, and horrible wrongs done and 
suffered! Then come strange trials before 
our tribunals, polluting the public mind. Then 
are great blue books piled up before Parlia- 
ment, filled with reports of inspectors and 
committees. Then eloquent newspaper arti- 
cles are let off" like rockets into an abyss, just 
to show the darkness, — and expire. Then 
have we fitful, clamorous bursts of popular 
indignation and remorse ; hasty partial reme- 
dies for antiquated mischiefs ; clumsy tinker- 
ing of barbarous and inadequate laws; — 



MUTUAL INFLUENCES. 169 

then the vain attempt to solder together unde- 
niable truths and admitted falsehoods into 
some brittle, plausible compromise ; — then at 
last the slowly awakening sense of a great 
want aching far down at the heart of society, 
throbbing upwards and outwards with a 
quicker and a quicker pulse ; and then, — 
what then? What if this great w^ant, this 
something' which we crave and seek, be in a 
manner a part of ourselves ? — lying so near 
to us, so close at our feet, that we have over- 
looked and lost it in reaching after the distant, 
the difficult, the impracticable ? 



Work in some form or other is the ap- 
pointed lot of all, — divinely appointed ; and, 
given as equal the religious responsibilities of 
the two sexes, might we not, in distributing 
the work to be done in this world, combine 
and use in more equal proportion the working 
faculties of men and women, and so find a 
remedy for many of those mistakes which 
have vitiated some of our noblest educational 
and charitable institutions ? Is it not possible 
15 



170 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

that in the apportioning of the work we may 
have too far sundered what in God's creation 
never can be sundered without pain and mis- 
chief, the masculine and the feminine influ- 
ences ? — lost the true balance between the 
element of power and the element of love? 
and trusted too much to mere mechanical 
means for carrying out high religious and 
moral purposes ? 

It seems indisputable that the mutual influ- 
ence of the two sexesj — brain upon brain, — 
life upon life, — becomes more subtle, and 
spiritual, and complex, more active and more 
intense, in proportion as the whole human 
race is improved and developed. The physi- 
ologist knows this well : let the moralist give 
heed to it, lest in becoming more intense, and 
active, and extended, such influences become 
at the same time less beneficent, less healthful, 
and less manageable. 

It appears to me that we do wrong to legis- 
late, and educate, and build up institutions 
without taking cognizance of this law of our 
being It appears to me that the domestic 



MUTUAL INFLUENCES. 171 

affections and the domestic duties, — what I 
have called the " communion of love and the 
communion of labor," — must be taken as the 
basis of all the more complicate social rela- 
tions, and that the family sympathies must be 
carried out and developed in all the forms and 
duties of social existence, before we can have 
a prosperous, healthy, happy, and truly Chris- 
tian community. Yes ! — I have the deepest 
conviction, founded not merely on my own 
experience and observation, but on the testi- 
mony of some of the wisest and best men 
among us, that to enlarge the working sphere 
of woman to the measure of her faculties, to 
give her a more practical and authorized share 
in all social arrangements which have for their 
object the amelioration of evil and suffering, 
is to elevate her in the social scale ; and that 
whatever renders womanhood respected and 
respectable in the estimation of the people 
tends to humanize and refine the people. 

It is surely an anomaly that, while women 
are divided from men in learning and working 
by -certain superstitions of a conventional 
morality, and in social position by the whole 



172 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

spirit and tendency of our past legislation, 
their material existence and interests are re- 
garded as identical; — identical, however, only 
in this sense, — that the material and social 
interests of the woman are always supposed 
to be merged in those of the man; while it is 
never taken for granted that the true interests 
of the man are inseparable from those of the 
woman; so at the outset we are met by incon- 
sistency and confusion, such as must inevitably 
disturb the security and integrity of all the 
mutual relations. 

Here, then, I take my stand, not on any 
hypothesis of expediency, but on what I con- 
ceive to be an essential law of life ; and I 
conclude that all our endowments for social 
good; whatever their especial purpose or 
denomination, — educational, sanitary, charit- 
able, penal, — will prosper and fulfil their 
objects in so far as we carry out this principle 
of combining in due proportion the masculine 
and the feminine element, and will fail or 
become perverted into some form of evil in so 
far as we neglect or ignore it. 



HOSPITALS. 173 

I WILL now proceed to illustrate my position 
by certain facts connected with the adminis- 
tration of various public institutions at home 
and abroad. 

And, first, with regard to hospitals. 

What is the purpose of a great hospital ? 
Ask a physician or a surgeon, zealous in his 
profession : he will probably answer that a 
great hospital is a great medical school in 
which the art of healing is scientifically and 
experimentally taught ; where the human suf- 
ferers who crowd those long vistas of beds are 
not men and women, but " cases " to be 
studied: and so under one aspect it ought to 
be, and must be. A great, well-ordered med- 
ical school is absolutely necessary ; and to be 
able to regard the various aspects of disease 
with calm discrimination, the too sensitive 
human sympathies must be set aside. There- 
fore much need is there here of all the 
masculine firmness of nerve and strength of 
understanding. But surely a great hospital 
has another purpose, that for which it was 
originally founded and endowed, namely, as a 
refuge and solace for disease and sufiering. 
15* 



174 THE COxMMUNION OF LABOR. 

Here are congregated in terrible reality all the 
ills enumerated in Milton's visionary lazar- 
house, — 

*' All maladies 
Of ghastly spasm or racking torture, qualms 
Of heart-sick agony, wide-wasting pestilence " — 

I spare you the rest of the horrible catalogue. 
He goes on, — 

*' Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; despair 
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch." 

But why must despair tend the sick? We 
can imagine a far different influence " busiest 
from couch to couch ! " 

There is a passage in Tennyson's poems, 
written long before the days of Florence 
Nightingale, which proves that poets have 
been rightly called prophets, and see " the 
thing that shall be as the thing that is." I 
will repeat the passage. He is describing the 
wounded warriors nursed and tended by the 
learned ladies, — 



" A kindlier influence reigned, and everywhere 
• Low voices with the ministerino^ hand 



HOSPITALS. 175 

Hung round the sick. The maidens came, they talked, 

They sung, they read, till she, not fair, began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble; to and fro. 

Like creatures native unto gracious act, 

And in their own clear element they moved." 

This, you will say, is the poetical aspect of 
the scene ; was it not poetical, too, when the 
poor soldier said that the very shadow of 
Florence Nightingale passing over his bed 
seenmed to do him good ? 

But to proceed. The practical advantages, 
the absolute necessity of a better order of 
nurses to take the charge and supervision of 
the sick in our hospitals, is now so far admit- 
ted that it is superfluous to add anything to 
what I said in my former Lecture. It is not 
now maintained that a class of women, whom 
I have heard designated by those who employ 
them as drunken, vulgar, unfeeling, and ineffi- 
cient, without any religious sense of responsi- 
bility, and hardened by the perpetual sight of 
suffering, are alone eligible to nurse and com- 
fort the sick poor. One great cause of the 
cruelty and neglect charged against hospital 
nurses is, that they become insensibly and 



176 THE COiVIMUNIOx\ OF LABOR. 

gradually hardened by perpetual sights and 
sounds of suffering. " A good nurse ought to 
receive every new case of affliction as if it 
v^ere the first ; " so it has been said. But if we 
look for this ever-fresh fount of sympat|iy and 
conscientiousness either from natural kindness 
of heart, sense of duty, or love of gain, we 
shall be disappointed. In a small hospital for 
wretched, helpless, bed-ridden paupers, one of 
the religious women acknowledged to me that 
their duties were of a nature so painful and 
revolting, and in their issue, which could end 
only in death, so depressing, that still, after 
being for years accustomed to the work, they 
were obliged every morning to dedicate them- 
selves anew to their duty, "for the love of- 
God.'^ It is because they were accustomed to 
the work, that such a renewed and especial 
consecration to it in heart and soul was daily 
necessary : nothing hardens like custom. 

" You ought to understand," said Mr. Mau- 
rice, "that the study of disease for the pur- 
pose of science has no tendency to harden 
the heart." True ; but to minister to disease 
with no ulterior purpose but self-interest, 



HOSPITALS. 177 

though it be of an elevated and enlightened 
kind, does and must harden the heart in the 
long run. 

It is one cause of that languor, and de- 
spondency, and impatience, which sometimes 
comes over zealous and kind-hearted women 
who devote themselves to the sick, and miser- 
able, and perverted, and ignorant poor, that 
they begin with a conviction that they shall 
find their reward in a certain palpable result 
of their labor ; that after a time they shall be 
able to count their successes on their fingers. 
Those who set about fulfilling the teaching of 
Christ on such terms are only a degree better 
than those who work for hire of another kind. 
In what is heart-warm charity better than 
ambition or love of glory, if it be not in this; 
that those who do God's work must devote 
themselves to it daily in a stronger faith and 
in a loftier hope, in the faith that no atom of 
such work shall be lost or pass away ? 

One purpose of a hospital supposes the 
presence of the feminine nature to minister 



178 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

through love as well as the masculine intel- 
lect to rule through power, — the presence of 
those who can soothe and comfort as well as 
those who can heal. Now, I will speak of 
what I have seen where this combined regime 
prevails. 

The Paris hospitals are so admirably organ- 
ized by the religious women, who in almost 
every instance share in the administration so 
far as regards the care of the sick, that I have 
often been surprised that hitherto the numbers 
of our medical men who have studied at Paris 
have not made any attempts to introduce a 
better system of female nursing into the hos- 
pitals at home. But they appear to have 
regarded every thing of the kind with despair 
or indifference. 

In my former Lecture I mentioned several 
of the most famous of these hospitals. During 
my last visit to Paris I visited a hospital 
which I had not before seen, — the hospital 
Laborissiere, which appeared to me a model 
of all that a civil hospital ought to be, — clean, 
airy, light, and lofty, above all, cheerful. I 
should observe that generally in the hospitals 



i 



HOSPITALS. 179 

served by Sisters of Charity, there is ever .an 
air of cheerfulness caused by their own sweet- 
ness of temper and voluntary devotion to their 
work. At the time that I visited this hospital 
it contained six hundred and twelve patients, 
three hundred men and three hundred and 
twelve women, in two ranges of building 
divided by a very pretty garden. The whole 
interior management is entrusted to twenty- 
five trained Sisters of the same Order as those 
who serve the Hotel-Dieu. There are besides 
about forty servants, men and women, — men 
to do the rough work, and male nurses to 
assist in the men's wards under the super- 
intendence of the Sisters. There are three 
physicians and two surgeons in constant 
attendance, a steward or comptroller of ac- 
counts, and other officers. To complete this 
picture, I must add that the hospital Laboris- 
siere was founded by a lady, a rich heiress, a 
married woman, too, whose husband, after her 
death, carried out her intentions to the utmost 
with zeal and fidelity. She had the assistance 
of the best architects in France to plan her 
building : medical and scientific men had 



180 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

aided her with their counsels. What the 
feminine instinct of compassion had con- 
ceived, was by the manly intellect planned 
and ordered, and again by female aid admin- 
istered. In all its arrangements, this hospital 
appeared to me a perfect example of the com- 
bined working of men and women. 

In contrast with this splendid foundation, I 
will mention another not less admirable in its 
way. 

When I was at Vienna, I saw a small 
hospital belonging to the Sisters of Charity 
there. The beginning had been very modest, 
two of the Sisters having settled in a small 
old house. Several of the adjoining buildings 
were added one after the other, connected by 
wooden corridors : the only new part which 
had any appearance of being adapted to its 
purpose was the infirmary, in which were fifty- 
two patients, twenty-six men and twenty-six 
women, besides nine beds for cholera. There 
were fifty Sisters, of whom one half, were 
employed in the house, and the other half 
were going their rounds amongst the poor, or 



HOSPITALS. 181 

nursing the sick in private houses. There 
was a nursery for infants, whose mothers were 
at work; a day-school for one hundred and 
fifty girls, in which only knitting and sewing 
were taught; all clean, orderly, and, above all, 
cheerful. There was a dispensary, where two 
of the Sisters were employed in making up 
prescriptions, homoeopathic and allopathic. 
There was a large airy kitchen, where three 
of the Sisters with two assistants were cook- 
ing. There were two priests and two physi- 
cians. So that, in fact, under this roof we 
had the elements on a small scale of an 
English workhouse ; but very different was 
the spirit which animated it. 

I saw at Vienna another excellent hospital 
for women alone, of which the whole admin- 
istration and support rested with the ladies 
of the Order of St. Elizabeth. These are 
cloistered^ that is, not allowed to go out of 
their home to nurse the sick and poor ; nor 
have they any schools ; but all sick women 
who apply for admission are taken in without 
any questions asked, so long as there is room 
IG 



182 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



for them, — cases of child-birth excepted. At 
the time I visited this hospital it contained 
ninety -two patients ; about twenty were cases 
of cholera. There were sixteen beds in each 
ward, over which two Sisters presided. The 
dispensary, which was excellently arranged, 
was entirely managed by two of the ladies. 
The Superior told me that they have always 
three or more Sisters preparing for their pro- 
fession under the best apothecaries ; and there 
was a large garden principally of medicinal 
and kitchen herbs. Nothing could exceed the 
purity of the air, and the cleanliness, order, 
and quiet everywhere apparent. 

In the great civil hospital at Vienna, one 
of the largest I have ever seen, larger even 
than the Hotel-Dieu at Paris, I found that 
the Sisters of Charity were about to be 
introduced. One of my friends there, a dis- 
tinguished naturalist and philosopher as well 
as physician, told me that the disorderly 
habits and the want of intelligence in the 
paid female nurses, had induced him to 
join with his colleagues in inviting the co- 



HOSPITALS. 



183 



operation of the religious Sisters, though it 
was at first rather against their will. In the 
hospital of St. John at Salzburg, the same 
change had been found necessary. 

I suppose that every traveller who has 
visited Milan remembers at least the outside 
of that most venerable and beautiful building, 
the ^ Spedale Maggiore (the Great Hospital). 
The exquisite and florid grace of the facade, 
with its terra-cotta mouldings, suggests the 
idea of some fairy structure, some palace of 
pleasure, rather than an asylum for the sick 
and poor. Although I could not help feeling 
this want of fitness, — for fitness is the first 
principle of taste, — yet as an artist I was 
struck with admiration of the architectural 
elegance, and used to stand before it, en- 
tranced as by music to the eye. But it is 
not of the exterior, but of the interior I have 
now to speak. It is the largest hospital I 
have ever visitegl, larger than the Hotel-Dieu 
at Paris, larger even than the great hospital 
at Vienna; and contained, on the day I 
visited it, more than twenty-five hundred 



184 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

patients, without reckoning those in the 
lying-in hospital and the hospital for found- 
lings and sick children, in connection with 
it. This large number I was told arose from 
a very sick season, and the prevalence of 
cholera: in general the number of patients 
does not exceed fifteen hundred. It belongs 
to the municipality, and is managed by six 
governors, each of whom is supreme acting 
governor for two months in the year. Forty 
Sisters of Charity and their Superior, with 
a large staff of female assistants, managed 
the nursing. 

Had I been content, like other travellers, 
with admiring and studying the beautiful 
architecture, I should have brought away a 
pleasanter impression of this great hospital; 
but the interior disappointed me. It seemed 
to me too large, too crowded, and the man- 
agement not quite satisfactory. It is the 
most richly endowed hospital in all Europe, 
and yet they say that it is deeply in debt. 
The change of government every two months 
must be injurious. I had not time to go 
into details, but would recommend those 



HOSPITALS. 185 

who are interested in such matters to study 
the administrative arrangements of this great 
hospital, and see where the good and the 
evil may lie. It is a great medical school. 

I had, when in Piedmont, particular op- 
portunities for learning the state of feeling 
in regard to the service of the hospitals, and 
it deserves some consideration. 

A great number of the medical students 
were in open opposition to the Sisters em- 
ployed in the hospitals, and on inquiring I 
found that this opposition arose from various 
causes. In the first place, it was generally 
allowed that there is a great laxity of morals, 
— I might give it a harder name, — prevalent 
among the medical students in Turin as 
elsewhere, and that the influence of these 
religious women, the strict order and sur- 
veillance exercised and enforced by them 
wherever they ruled, is in the highest degree 
distasteful to those young men ; more es- 
pecially the protection afforded by the Sisters 
to the poor young female patients, when 
convalescent, or after leaving the hospitals, 



186 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

had actually excited a feeling against them ; 
though as women, and as religious women, 
one might think that this was a duty, and 
not the least sacred of their duties. 

This adverse feeling took the color of lib- 
eralism. 

Now I had, and have, an intense sympathy 
with the Piedmontese, in their brave struggle 
for political and religious independence; but 
I cannot help wishing and hoping that the 
reform, in both cases, may be carried out in 
the progressive, not in the destructive spirit ; 
and, thanks to those enlightened men who 
guide the councils of Piedmont, and who do 
not " mistake reverse of wrong for right," it 
has hitherto been so. 

It will be remembered that the Sisters of 
Charity were excepted when other religious 
orders were suppressed ; and, in consequence, 
it was a sort of fashion with an ultra party 
to consider them as a part of an ecclesiastical 
regime, which had been identified with all 
the evils of tyraniiy, ignorance, and priestly 
domination, This feeling was subsiding 
when I was there. The heroism of the 



HOSPITALS. 



187 



sixty-two Sisters of Charity, who had ac- 
companied the Piedmontese armies to the 
East, and of their Superior, Madame de 
Cordera, had excited in the public mind 
a degree of enthusiasm which silenced the 
vulgar and short-sighted opposition of a set 
of dissipated, thoughtless boys. 

One thing more had occurred which struck 
me. A few months before my arrival, and as 
a part of this medical agitation, a petition or 
protest had been drawn up by the medical 
students and the young men who served in 
the apothecaries' shops, against the small 
dispensaries and infirmaries which the Sisters 
had of their own for the poor, and for chil- 
dren. The plea was, not that their infirmaries 
were ill-served or that the medicines were 
ill compounded, or that any mistakes had 
occurred from ignorance or unskilfulness, but 
that this small medical practice, unpaid and 
beneficent, "took the bread out of the men's 
mouths." Before we laugh at this short- 
sighted folly and cruelty, which supposes that 
the interests of the two sexes can possibly 
be antagonistic instead of being inseparably 



188 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



bound up together, we must recollect that 
we have had some specimens of the same 
feeling in our own country; as for instance, 
the opposition to the female school at Marl- 
borough House, and the steady opposition 
of the inferior part of the medical profession 
to all female practitioners. That some de- 
partments of medicine are peculiarly suited 
to women is beginning to strike the public 
mind. I know that there are enlightened 
and distinguished physicians both here and 
in France, who take this view of the subject, 
though the medical profession as a body en- 
tertain a peculiar dread of all innovation, 
which they resist with as much passive per- 
tinacity as boards of guardians and London 
Corporations.* 

* In the Memoirs of Lord Cockburn, we haye an edifying 
instance of the extent to* which professional habits of thinking 
may unconsciously verge on prejudice the most absurd and 
cruel: — ''In 1800, the people of Edinburgh were much 
occupied about the removal of an evil in the system of their 
infirmary; which evil, though strenuously defended by able 
men, it is difficult now to believe could ever have existed. 
The medical officers consisted at that time of the whole 
members of the colleges of physicians and of surgeons, who 
attended the hospital by a monthly rotation: so that the 
patients had the chance of an opposite treatment, according 



HOSPITALS. 



189 



Before I leave Piedmont, I must mention 
two more hospitals, because of the contrast 
they afford, which will aptly illustrate the 
principle I am endeavoring to advocate. 

The hospital of St. John at Vercelli, which 
I had the opportunity of inspecting minutely, 
left a strong impression on my mind. At 
the time I visited it, it contained nearly four 
hundred patients. There was besides, in an 
adjacent building, a school and hospital for 
poor children. The whole interior economy 
of these two hospitals was under the man- 
agement of eighteen women, with a staff of 
assistants both male and female. The Su- 
perior, a very handsome, intelligent woman, 
had been trained at Paris, and had presided 

to the whim of the doctor, every thirty days. Dr. James 
Gregory, whose learning extended beyond that of his pro- 
fession, attacked this absurdity in one of his powerfal, but 
wild and personal, quarto pamphlets. The public was en- 
tirely on his side, and so at last were the managers, who 
resolved that the medical officers should be appointed per- 
manently, as they have ever since been. Most of the medical 
profession, including the whole private lecturers, and even 
the two colleges, who all held that the power of annoying the 
patients in their turn was their riglit, were vehement against 
this innovation; and some of them went to law in opposition 
to it.'' 



190 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

over this provincial hospital for eleven years. 
There was the same cheerfulness which I 
have had occasion to remark in all insti- 
tutions where the religious and feminine 
elements were allowed to influence the ma- 
terial administration ; and everything was 
exquisitely clean, airy, and comfortable. In 
this instance the dispensary (Pharmacie) was 
managed by apothecaries, and not by the 
women. 

Now, in contrast with this hospital, I will 
describe a famous hospital at Turin. It is 
a recent building, with all the latest im- 
provements, and considered, in respect to 
fitness for its purpose, as a chef-cfcduvre of 
architecture. The contrivances and material 
appliances for the sick and convalescent were 
exhibited to me as the wonder and boast of 
the city ; certainly they were most ingenious. 
The management was in the hands of a 
committee of gentlemen ; under them a 
numerous staff of priests and physicians. 
Two or three female servants of the lowest 
class were sweeping and cleaning. In the 
convalescent wards I saw a great deal of 



HOSPITALS. 191 

card-playing. All was formal, cold, clean, 
and silent ; no cheerful, kindly faces, no soft 
low voices, no light active figures were hov- 
ering round. I left the place with a melan- 
choly feeling, shared as I found by those who 
were with me. One of them, an accomplished 
physician, felt and candidly acknowledged the 
want of female influence here. 

One of the directors of the great military 
hospital at Turin told me that he regarded 
it as one of the best deeds of his life, that 
he had recommended, and carried through, 
the employment of the Sisters of Charity in 
this institution. Before the introduction of 
these ladies, the sick soldiers had been nursed 
by orderlies sent from the neighboring bar- 
racks, — men chosen because they were unfit 
for other work. The most rigid discipline 
was necessary to keep them in order; and 
the dirt, neglect, and general immorality were 
frightful. Any change was, however, resisted 
by the military and medical authorities, till 
the invasion of the cholera ; then the orderlies 
became, most of them, useless, distracted, and 



192 THE COMMUNIOx\ OF LABOR. 

almost paralyzed with terror. Some devoted 
Sisters of Charity were introduced in a 
moment of perplexity and panic ; then all w^ent 
w^ell, — propriety, cleanliness, and comfort pre- 
vailed. " No day passes," said my informant, 
"that I do not bless God for the change w'hich 
I was the humble instrument of accomplish- 
ing in this place ! " 

Very similar was the information I received 
relative to the naval hospital at Genoa; but I 
had not the opportunity of visiting it. 

Another excellent hospital at Turin, that of 
St. John, contained, when I visited it, four 
hundred patients, a nearly equal number of men 
and women. There were, besides, a separate 
ward for sick children, and two wards con- 
taining about sixty "incurables'' — the bed- 
ridden and helpless poor, of the same class 
which find refuge in our workhouses. The 
whole of this large establishment was under 
the management of twenty-two religious 
w^omen, with a staff of about forty-five as- 
sistants, men and women, and a large number 
of medical men and students. All was clean, 
and neat, and cheerful. I was particularly 



HOSPITALS. 193 

struck by the neatness with which the food 
was served; men brought it up in large trays, 
but the ladies themselves distributed it- 
Some friends of the poor sick were near the 
beds. I remember being touched by the sight 
of a little dog which, with its fore-paw^s resting 
on the bed and a pathetic wistful expression in 
its drooping face, kept it^ eyes steadfastly fixed 
on the sick man ; a girl was kneeling beside 
him, to whom one of the Sisters was speaking 
words of comfort. 

In this hospital and others I have found an 
excellent arrangement for the night-watch : it 
was a large sentry-box of an octagon-shape, 
looking each way, the upper part all of glass, 
but furnished with curtains; and on a kind 
of dresser or table were arranged writing 
materials, all kinds of medicine and restor- 
atives which might be required in haste, and 
a supply of linen, napkins, &c. Here two 
Sisters watched all night long ; here the ac- 
counts were kept, and the private business of 
the wards carried on in the daytime : a cer- 
tain degree of privacy was thus secured for 
the ladies on duty when necessary. The 
17 



194 COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

Superior, whom we should call the matron, 
was an elderly woman, wearing the same 
simple convenient religious dress as the others, 
and only recognized by the large bunch of 
keys at her girdle. 

The March ese A , one of the governors 

of the Hospice de la' Maternite^ described to 
us in terms of horror the state in which he had 
found the establishment when under the man- 
agement of a board of governors who em- 
ployed hired matrons and nurses. At last, in 
despair, he sent for some trained Sisters, ten 
of whom, with a Superior, now directed the 
whole in that spirit of order, cheerfulness, and 
unremitting attention, which belongs to them. ' 
The Marchese particularly dwelt on their 
economy. " We cannot," said he, "give them 
unlimited means {des fonds a discretion)^ for 
these good ladies think that all should go to 
the poor ; but if we allow them a fixed sura, 
we find they can do more with that sum than 
we could have believed possible, and they 
never go beyond it: they are admirable ac- 
countants and economists." 



HOSPITALS. 



195 



I could relate much more of what I have 
seen in hospitals at home and abroad; but 
this Lecture is intended to be suggestive only, 
and for this purpose I have said enough. Yet, 
before I pass on to another part of my subject, 
I must be allowed to make one or two obser- 
vations on the testimony before me relative to 
the moral and medical efficiency of the lady- 
nurses sent to the East. 

In the midst of many differences of opinion, 
in one thing all are agreed. All to whom 
I have spoken, without one exception, bear 
witness to the salutary influence exercised by 
the lady-nurses over the men, and the sub- 
mission and gratitude of the patients. In the 
most violent attacks of fever and delirium, 
when the orderlies could not hold them down 
in their beds, the mere presence of one of 
these ladies, instead of being exciting, had the 
effect of instantly calming the spirits and 
subduing the most refractory. It is allowed 
also that these ladies had the power to repress 
swearing and bad and coarse language; to 
prevent the smuggling of brandy and raka 
into the wards; to open the hearts of the 



196 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

sullen and desperate to contrition and respon- 
sive kindness. The facts are recorded, and 
remain uncontradicted ; but the natural infer- 
ence to be drawn from them does not seem to 
have struck our medical men. 

With regard to the feeling between the 
nurses and the patients, here is a page of 
testimony which can hardly be read without 
emotion. 

" We have attended many hundreds of the 
sick in the British army, suffering under every 
form of disease, — the weary, wasting, low 
typhus fever or dysentery ; or the agonies of 
the frost bite; and they were surrounded by 
every accumulation of misery. For the fever- 
ed lips there was no cooling drink, for the 
sinking frame no strengthening food, for the 
wounded limb no soft pillow, for many no 
watchful hands to help ; but never did we hear 
a murmur pass their lips. Those whose priv- 
ilege it was to nurse them noticed only obedi- 
ence to orders, respectful gratitude, patience, 
and the most self-denying consideration for 
those who ministered. Even when in an ap- 
parently dying state, they would look up in 
our faces and smile." 



4 



HOSPITALS. 197 

She adds in another place, with deep natural 
feeling, " It was so sad to see them die one 
after another ; we learned to love them so ! '' 

" We were trained," she says, " under the 
hospital nurses at home, receiving our instruc- 
tion from them ; and what we saw there of 
disobedience to medical orders and cruelty to 
patients would fill pages, and make you shud- 
der." " More of evil language was heard in 
one hour in a London hospital than met my 
ears during months in a military one." 

The drawbacks in regard to our volunteer 
ladies, were not want of sense nor want of 
zeal, but the want of robust health, experience, 
and sufficient training. 

The experiment of a staff of the volunteer 
lady-nurses from St. John's House,* with paid 
and trained nurses under their orders, has 
lately been made in King's College Hospital. 
I think I may say that it has so far succeeded. 
I have the testimony of one of the gentlemen 
filling a high official situation at the hospital, 
(and who was at first opposed to the introduc- 

* The training institution for nurses, in Queen Square, 
Westminster. 

17* 



198 THE COMMUNIOxN OF LABOR. 

tion of these ladies, or at least most doubtful 
of their success,) that they have up to this 
time succeeded ; that strong prejudices have 
been overcome, that there has been a purifying 
and harmonizing influence at work since their 
arrival. The testimony borne by the ladies 
themselves to the courtesy of the medical men 
and the students, and the entire harmony with 
which they now work together, struck me even 
more. 

The same conquest was obtained by the 
volunteer ladies in the East. One of them 
says: "So misrepresented were the army- 
surgeons that the Sisters and Ladies feared 
them more than any other horrors." " We 
were told to expect rebuff, discouragement, 
even insult. We never during this whole year 
experienced any other than assistance, encour- 
agement, gentlemanly treatment, and, from 
many, the most cordial kindness." Of course 
there were some exceptions, but this was to 
be expected ; and in reference to the principle 
for which I am now pleading, " the commun- 
ion of labor," I consider this testimony very 
satisfactory. 



PRISONS. 199 

I MUST now say a few words with regard to 
female administration in prisons. 

After the revelations made by Howard 
seventy or eighty years ago, and their imme- 
diate effect in rousing the attention and sym- 
pathy of Em^ope, one would have thought it 
impossible to fall back into the ghastly horrors 
he had discovered and exposed. Yet in 1816, 
his name was already almost forgotten. The 
acts of parliament he had procured were be- 
come a dead letter, were openly and grossly 
violated. The very slow progress made by 
moral influences in the last century is very 
striking, taken in connection with the cold 
and formal scepticism which then found favor 
with men who fancied themselves philoso- 
phers, but were only leading a popular reaction 
against the formal theological superstitions of 
the previous century. There was, indeed, with 
much intellectual movement, a deadness of 
feeling, an indifference to the well-being of the 
masses, an utterly low standard of principle, 
religious, moral, political, which in these days 
of a more awakened public conscience seems 
hardly conceivable. We make slow work of 



200 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

it now; we want a higher standard in high 
places ; but in this at least we are improved, 
— men do not noic dispute that such or such 
things ought to be done, may be done, must 
be done ; unhappily they do dispute endlessly 
as to the how, the when, and the where, till 
they defeat their own purposes, allow great 
principles to be shelved by wretched perplexi- 
ties of detail, and shrink back, cowed by the 
passive, stolid resistance of ignorance and 
self-interest. Forty years after the publication 
of Howard's " State of Prisons," what was 
the state of the greatest prison in England ? 
When Elizabeth Fry ventured into that " den 
of wild beasts," as it was called, the female 
ward in Newgate, about three hundred women 
were found crammed together, begging, swear- 
ing, drinking, fighting, gambling, dancing, and 
dressing up in men's clothes, and two jailers 
set to watch them, who stood jeering at the 
door, literally afraid to enter. Elizabeth Fry 
would have been as safe in the men's wards 
as among her own sex ; she would certainly 
have exercised there an influence as healing, 
as benign, as redeeming ; but she did well in 



PRISONS. 201 

the first instance, and in the then state of 
public feeling, to confine her efforts to the 
miserable women.* 

I know that there are many persons who 
would receive with a laugh of scorn, or a 
shudder of disgust, the idea of having vir^ 
tuous, religious, refined, well-educated women, 
brought into contact with wretched and de- 
praved prisoners of the other sex. It would 
even be more revolting than the idea of a born 
lady, — a Florence Nightingale, or a Miss An- 
derson, or a Miss Shaw Stewart, — nursing a 
wounded soldier, appeared only two years 
ago. Yet this is precisely what I wish to see 
tried. Captain Maconochie mentions the in- 
fluence which his wife exercised over the most 
hardened and horrible criminals, the convicts 
at Norfolk Island : because she was fearless, 

* The act of parliament procured through Mrs. Fry's in- 
fluence, ordered the appointment of matrons and female 
officers in all our prisons ; but no provision has been made 
for their proper training, nor are the qualifications at all de- 
fined. 

My idea is that, besides a superior order of female superin- 
tendents, we should have lady visitors also, as it is like an 
infusion of fresh life and energy ; but I do not think that such 
visiting should be confined to the female wards. 



202 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

and gentle, and a woman, those men respected 
her, — they who respected nothing else in 
heaven or earth. It was something like the 
sanitary influence which the surgeon's wife 
exercised over the cholera patients in a mili- 
tary hospital, and which I mentioned in my 
former Lecture.* Such instances might be 
multiplied ; — indeed many such cases are 
matters of notoriety ; but so far as I can see, 
they are always regarded as the consequence 
of accident, not the result of an essential law ; . 
they have led to no farther experiments, and 
no inference to guide us systematically has 
been drawn from them. 

In my Lecture last year I mentioned the 
employment of trained Sisters of Charity in 
some of the prisons of Piedmont. When I 
was there a few months ago, I obtained, by 
the courtesy of our ambassador, a written 
memorandum of the rules and regulations 
applied to them, the conditions under which 
they were employed, and the price paid for 
their services to the religious institutions they 

* Vide " Sisters of Charity," p. 126. 



PRISONS. 



203 



belonged to. I think it unnecessary to give 
here the twenty-three articles of this regula- 
tion, which would not be applicable, at least 
only partially applicable, in this country. It 
appears that twenty-eight of these ladies are 
employed in five reformatory prisons (one of 
which is for females, the others for men), and 
that eight of the other prisons ( Carceri giudi- 
ziarie) are partly administered by the "Suorej^ 
but the number was not fixed in each prison. 

In the general Report on the condition of 
the prisons, addressed to the Minister of the 
Interior, I found this paragraph, which I trans- 
late from the original Italian, — 

" It is an indisputable fact that the prisons 
which are served by the Sisters are the best 
ordered, the most cleanly, and in all respects 
the best regulated in the country ; hence it is 
to be desired that the number should be in- 
creased; and this is the more desirable, because 
where the Sisters are not established the 
criminal women are under the charge of jailers 
of the other sex, which ought not to be toler- 
ated." 

To this I add the testimony of the Minister 



204 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

himself from a private communication : " Not 
only have we experienced the advantage 
of employing the Sisters of Charity in the 
prisons, in the supervision of the details, in 
distributing food, preparing medicines, and 
nursing the sick in the infirmaries; but we 
find that the influence of these ladies on the 
minds of the prisoners, when recovering from 
sickness, has been productive of the greatest 
benefit, as leading to permanent reform in 
many cases, and a better frame of mind al- 
ways ; for this reason, among others, we have 
given them every encouragement." * 

Among the other reasons alluded to, the 
greater economy of the management was a 
principal one. It is admitted, even by those 
who are opposed to them, that in the admin- 
istration of details these women can always 
make a given sum go farther than the paid 
officials of the other sex. I must add that, in 
some of the prisons mentioned to me, canteens 

* In my former Lecture (" Sisters of Charity,") I alluded 
to the employment of women in the prisons of Piedmont. 
My visit to Turin in November, 1856, confirmed by personal 
knowledge and inquiry the testimony already received on this 
point. 



PRISONS. 205 

were allowed, where the prisoners, besides 
their rations, might purchase various indul- 
gences. These canteens were placed under 
the direction of the Sisters ; but as they pro- 
tested against the sale of wine and brandy to 
the prisoners, except when medically pre- 
scribed, some disagreement arose between 
them and the other officials, and I do not 
know how it terminated. 



Even at the risk of wearying you with this 
part of my subject, I will venture to describe, 
as briefly as I can, a certain reformatory pris- 
on of a very unusual kind, and which left a 
strong impression on my mind of the good 
that may be effected by very simple means. 
A prison governed chiefly by women, — and 
the women as well as the men who directed it 
responsible only to the Government, and not 
merely subordinate like the female officers in 
our prisons, — was a singular spectacle ; and 
I hope it will be distinctly understood that in 
describing what I have seen, it is not with 

any idea that these arrangements could be or 

18 



206 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

ought to be, exactly imitated among us. I 
only suggest the facts as illustrative of the 
principle I advocate, and as worthy of the 
consideration of humane and philosophic 
thinkers. 

This prison at Neudorf is an experiment 
which as yet has only had a three years' trial, 
but it has so completely succeeded up to this 
time that they are preparing to organize eleven 
other prisons on the same plan. From a 
conversation I had with one of the Govern- 
ment officers, I could understand that the 
economy of the administration is a strong 
recommendation, as well as the moral success. 
Its origin is worth mentioning. It began by 
the efforts made by two humane ladies to find 
a refuge for those wretched creatures of their 
own sex who, after undergoing their term of 
punishment, were cast out of the prisons. 
These ladies, not finding at hand any persons 
prepared to carry out their views, sent to 
France for two women of a religious order 
which was founded for the reformation of lost 
and depraved women ; and two of the Sisters 
were sent from Angers accordingly. After a 



PRisOi\s. 207 

while this small institution attracted the no- 
tice of the Government. It was taken in 
hand officially, enlarged, and organized as a 
prison as well as a penitentiary ; the original 
plan being strictly adhered to, and the same 
management retained. 

At the time that I visited it, this prison 
consisted of several different buildings, and a 
large garden enclosed by high walls. The 
inmates were divided into three classes, com- 
pletely separated. The first were the crimi- 
nals, the most desperate characters, brought 
there from the prisons at Vienna, and the 
very refuse of those prisons. They had been 
brought there six or eight at a time, fettered 
hand and foot, and guarded by soldiers and 
policemen. 

The second class, drafted from the first, 
were called the penitents ; they were allowed 
to assist in the house, to cook, and to wash, 
and to work in the garden, which last was a 
great boon. There were more than fifty of 
this class. 

The third class were the voluntaries, those 
who, when their term of punishment and 



208 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

penitence had expired, preferred remaining in 
the house, and were allowed to do so. They 
were employed in a work of which a part 
of the profit was retained for their benefit. 
There were about twelve or fourteen of this 
class. The whole number of criminals then 
in the prison exceeded two hundred, and they 
expected more the next day. 

To manage these unhappy, disordered, per- 
verted creatures, there were twelve women, 
assisted by three chaplains, a surgeon, and a 
physician: none of the men resided in the 
house, but visited it every day. The soldiers 
and police officers, who had been sent in the 
first instance as guards and jailers, had been 
dismissed. The dignity, good sense, patience, 
and tenderness of this female board of man- 
agement were extraordinary. The ventilation 
and the cleanliness were perfect ; while the 
food, beds, and furniture were of the very 
coarsest kind. The medical supervision was 
important, where there was as much disease, — 
of frightful, physical disease, — as there was 
of moral disease, crime, and misery. There 
was a surgeon and physician, who visited 



I 



PRISONS. 209 

daily. There was a dispensary, under the 
care of two Sisters, who acted as chief nurses 
and apothecaries. One of these was busy 
with the sick, the other went round with me. 
She was a little, active woman, not more 
than two or three and thirty, with a most 
cheerful face and bright, kind, dark eyes. 
She had been two years in the prison, and 
had previously received a careful training of 
five years, — three years in the general duties 
of her vocation, and two years of medical 
training. She spoke with great intelligence 
of the differences of individual temperament, 
requiring a different medical and moral treat- 
ment. 

The Sister who superintended the care of 
the criminals was the oldest I saw, and she 
was bright-looking also. The Superior, who 
presided over the whole establishment, had a 
serious look, and a pale, care-worn, but per- 
fectly mild and dignified face. 

The differences between the countenances 

of those criminals who had lately arrived, and 

those who had been admitted into the class of 

penitents, was extraordinary. The first were 

18* 



210 THE COjMMUNION OF LABOR. 

either stupid, gross, and vacant, or absolutely 
frightful from the predominance of evil propen- 
sities. The latter were at least humanized. 

When I expressed my astonishment that so 
small a number of women could manage such 
a set of wild and wicked creatures, the answer 
was : " If we want assistance we shall have 
it ; but it is as easy with our system to man- 
age two hundred or three hundred as one 
hundred or fifty." She then added devoutly, 
" The power is not in ourselves ; it is granted 
from above." It was plain that she had the 
most perfect faith in that power, and in 
the text which declared all things possible to 
faith. 

We must bear in mind that here men and 
women were acting together ; that in all the 
regulations, religious and sanitary, there was 
mutual aid, mutual respect, an interchange 
of experience ; but the women were subordi- 
nate only to the chief civil and ecclessiastical 
authority; the internal administration rested 
with them.* 

* I hope it will be remembered here, and in other parts of 
this essay, that I am not arguing for any particular system 



REFORMATORY SCHOOLS. 211 

If what I have said of the salutary effects of 
female influence in prisons carry any weight, 
yet more does it apply to the employment of 
superior women in the Reformatory schools for 
young criminals. Profligate boys, accustomed 
to see only the most coarse and depraved 
women (their own female relatives are in 
general examples of the worst class), would 
be especially touched and tamed by the mere 
presence of a better order of women. I ob- 
serve that in the last report of the school at 
Mettrai, mention is made of the nine Sisters 
of Charity who are employed to superintend 
the kitchen and infirmary ; which last consists 
of a ward with about ten beds, and a corridor 
where the Sisters receive the out-patients ; 
and to the constant watchfulness, medical 
skill, and gentle influence of these women 
much good is attributed. 

Mr. Hill, in his work on Crime, in speaking 
of the officials in the reformatory prisons for 

of <administration, or discipline, or kind or degree of punish- 
ment ; but merely for this principle, that whatever the system 
selected as the best, it should be carried out by a due admix- 
ture of female influence and management combined with the 
man's government. 



212 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

boys, says expressly that some of these ofScials 
ought to be women " for the sake of female 
influence, and to call into action those family 
feelings, which Mr. Sidney Turner and Miss 
Carpenter think* of such vital importance in 
the process of reformation." This is precisely 
the principle for which I am pleading, and in 
organizing the new reformatory institutions it 
might be advantageously kept in view. 

" It should be remembered," adds Mr. Hill, 
" that up to the time of his commitment, a 
criminal has often had no one to give him 
counsel or sympathy, no virtuous parent or 
kind relative to feel for him or guide him 
aright, and that there is consequently in his 
case a void which is perhaps first filled up by a 
kind prison officer. This may account for the 
almost filial affection often shown, particularly 
by the younger prisoners, towards a good gov- 
ernor, chaplain, or matron." "What we have 
now to do is to enlarge the application of this 
principle. 

The extreme difficulty of finding masters at 
the best of all our reformatory schools, that at 



REFORMATORY SCHOOLS. 213 

Redhill, was the subject discussed in a recent 
meeting of benevolent and intelligent men, 
interested in this institution. I happened to 
be present. I heard the qualifications for a 
master to be set over these unhappy little 
delinquents thus described; — He must have 
great tenderness and kindness of heart, great 
power of calling forth and sympathizing with 
the least manifestations of goodness or hope- 
fulness ; quick perception of character ; great 
firmness, and judgment, and command of 
temper; skill in some handicraft, as carpenter- 
ing and gardening ; a dignified, or at least 
attractive, presence, and good manners, — the 
personal qualities and appearance being found 
of consequence to impress the boys wdth re- 
spect. Now it is just possible that all these 
rare and admirable qualities, some of which 
God has given in a larger degree to the 
woman and others to the man, might be 
found combined in one man ; but such a man 
has not yet been met with, and many such 
would hardly be found for a stipend of 30/. or 
401. a year. Then, in this dilemma, instead 
of insisting on a combination of the paternal 



214 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

and the maternal qualifications in one person, 
might it not be possible, by associating some 
well educated and well trained women in the 
administration of these schools, to produce 
the required influences, — the tenderness, the 
sympathy, the superior manners, and refined 
deportment on one hand, and the firmness 
and energy, the manly government, and skill 
in handicrafts and gardening, on the other ? 
This solution was not proposed by any one 
of the gentlemien who spoke ; it did not seem 
to occur to any one present; and yet is it 
not worth consideration? At all events I 
must express my conviction that, going on as 
they are now doing, without the combination 
of those influences which ought to represent 
in such a community the maternal and 
sisterly, as well as the paternal and fraternal, 
relations of the home, their efforts will be in 
vain ; their admirable institution will fall to 
pieces sooner or later, and people will at- 
tribute such a result to every possible cause 
except the real one. 

The reformatory schools for perverted and 



REFORMATORY SCHOOLS. 215 

criminal girls present many more difficulties 
than those for boys. I do not know hov/ 
it is intended to meet these especial diffi- 
culties, nor what consideration has as yet 
been given to them, nor in whose hands the 
administration of these reformatory schools 
is to be placed; for all I have as yet heard 
upon the subject, and all the pamphlets and 
authorities I have been able to consult, have 
reference principally to the treatment of de- 
linquent boys, and very little mention is made 
of the poor female children of the " perishing 
and dangerous class" — {perishing and dan- 
gerous in every sense of these words they 
too surely are!) One thing is most certain, 
that in their case the supervision of pure- 
minded, humane, intelligent, and experienced 
men will be as necessary as the feminine 
element in the reformatory schools for boys ; 
and for similar reasons, medical knowledge 
will be required in addition to the moral and 
religious influences. This has, I think, ob- 
tained too little consideration, and it is one 
of great importance 



216 



THE COMMUNIOxN OF LABOR. 



It is worth noticing that a proposal, made 
during this last session of parliament,* to aid 
the female penitentiaries by a grant of public 
money, however small, and thus obtain from 
the government the mere recognition of the 
existence of such institutions and their ne- 
cessity, fell to the ground; even the usual 
deprecatory intimation that it would be "con- 
sidered and brought forward next session," 
— the common device by which troublesome 
propositions are stifled or shufl[led off, — was 
not here vouchsafed : the motion was re- 
ceived with absolute silence, and set aside 
by a few words from the speaker. 

I can conceive that there might be many 
reasons for this reluctance to discuss such 
themes officially. It might not only offend 
the nice decorum of our House of Commons ; 
it might perhaps awaken in some generous 
and conscientious minds a keener touch of 
retrospective pity, a more acute and self- 
reproachful pain. Let us, therefore, set the 
past aside ; let us accept the excuse that a 
far lower standard of feeling and opinion 

* July 15, 1866. 



PENITENTIARIES. 217 

existed on this miserable subject some years 
ago ; and let us think with gratitude of the 
more hopeful present, of the wiser and better 
future which we may anticipate both for 
men and women. 

And since these female reformatories must 
eventually find their place among the public 
exigencies to be considered, one may ask, 
what makes the case of poor, depraved, de- 
linquent girls far worse in itself, far more 
difficult to deal with, far more hopeless alto- 
gether, than that of depraved delinquent boys? 
How is it, that, below the lowest class of 
men, there is a lower class of women, abashed 
by the total loss of self-respect, and perverse 
from a sense of perpetual wrong ? It is so, 
we are told ; but why is it so ? Does it arise 
from the greater delicacy of the organization, 
— from the perpetual outrage to the nature 
of the creature thus sacrificed ? I cannot 
go into these questions at present. I must 
leave them to be considered and settled by 
such of our medical men and our clergy 
who may be, — what all of them ought to 
be, — what our Saviour was on earth, — mor- 

19 



218 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



alists and philosophers ; for these questions 
are of the deepest import, and must be set- 
tled sooner or later. Meantime it is allowed 
that the female reformatories now existing 
are utterly insignificant and inadequate in 
comparison to the existing amount of evil 
and misery; it is allowed that they present 
peculiar and unmanageable difficulties, that 
they are not successful, even the best of them. 
You hear it said that a hundredfold of the 
money, the labor, expended on them ought 
not to be regarded as thrown aw^ay, if but 
one soul out of twenty were redeemed from 
perdition. All very proper and very pious. 
But how is it that in this case nineteen souls 
out of the twenty are supposed to be con- 
signed to a perdition past cure, past hope, 
past help ? The truth is, that it is not merely 
the peculiar difficulties, nor the horror of cor- 
rupting influences, which interpose to prevent 
success : it is the incredible rashness and 
almost incredible mistakes of those who ig- 
norantly, but in perfect good faith and self- 
complacency, undertake a task which requires 
all the aid of long training, experience, and 



PENITENTIARIES. 219 

knowIedgCj combined with the impulses of 
benevolence, the support of religious faith, — 
and, I will add, a genuine vocation such as I 
have seen in some characters. 

"When I was at Turin, I visited an institu- 
tion for the redemption of "unfortunate girls," 
(as they call themselves,* poor creatures ! ) 
which appeared to me peculiarly successful. 
I did not consider it perfect, nor could all its 
details be imitated here. Yet some of the 
natural principles, recognized and carried out, 
appeared to me most important. It seemed 
to have achieved for female victims and de- 
linquents what Mettrai has done for those of 
the other sex. 

This institution (called at Turin il Refugio^ 
the Refuge) was founded nearly thirty years 
ago by a "good Christian," whose name was 
not given to me, but who still lives, a very 
old man. When his means were exhausted 
he had recourse to the Marquise de Barol, 

* If you ask a good-looking girl in a hospital, or the in- 
firmary of a workhouse, what is her condition of life, she will 
perhaps answer, " If you please, ma'ara, I'm an unfortunate 
girl," in a tone of languid indiii'erence, as if it were a pro- 
fession like any other. 



220 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

who has from that time devoted her life, and 
the greater part of her possessions, to the 
objects of this institution. 

In the Memoirs of Mrs. Fry* there may 
be found a letter which Madame de Barol 
addressed to her on the subject of this insti- 
tution and its objects, when it had existed 
for three or four years only. The letter is 
dated 1829, and is very interesting. Madame 
de Barol told me candidly, in 1855, that in 
the commencement she had made mistakes : 
she had been too severe. It had required 
twenty years of reflection, experience, and 
the most able assistance, to work out her 
purposes. 

The institution began on a small scale with 
few inmates : it now covers a large space of 
ground, and several ranges of buildings for 
various departments, all connected, and yet 
most carefully separated. There are several 
distinct gardens enclosed by these buildings, 
and the green trees and flowers give an ap- 
pearance of cheerfulness to the whole. 

There is, first, a refuge for casual and ex- 
treme wretchedness. A certificate from a 

■ * Vol. ii. p. 39. 



PENITENTIARIES. 



221 



priest or a physician is required, but often 
dispensed with. I saw a child brought into 
this place by its weeping and despairing 
mother, — a child about ten years old and in 
a fearful state. There was no certificate in 
this case, but the wretched little creature was 
taken in at once. There is an infirmary admi- 
rably managed by a good physician and two 
medical Sisters of a religious order. There are 
also convalescent wards. These parts of the 
building are kept separate, and the inmates 
carefully classed, all the younger patients 
being in a separate ward. 

In the penitentiary and schools, forming 
the second idepartment, the young girls and 
children are kept distinct from the elder ones, 
and those who had lately entered from the 
others. I saw about twenty girls under the 
age of fifteen, but only a few together in one 
room. Only a few were tolerably handsome; 
many looked intelligent and kindly. In one 
of these rooms I found a tame thrush hopping 
about, and I remember a girl with a soft face 
crumbling some bread for it, saved from her 
dinner. Reading, writing, plain work, and 
10* 



222 THE CO.MMUxXION OF LABOR. 

embroidery are taught, also cooking, and other 
domestic work. A certain number assisted by 
rotation in the large, lightsome kitchens and 
the general service of the house, but not till 
they had been there some months, and had 
received badges for good conduct. There are 
three gradations of these badges of merit, 
earned by various terms of probation. It was 
quite clear to me that these badges were worn 
with pleasure: whenever I fixed my eyes upon 
the little bits of red or blue ribbon, attached 
to the dress, and smiled approbation, I was 
m.et by a responsive smile, — sometimes by a 
deep, modest blush. The third and highest 
order of merit, which was a certificate of good 
conduct and steady industry during three years 
at least, conferred the privilege of entering an 
order destined to nurse the sick in the infir- 
mary, or entrusted to keep order in the small 
classes. They had also a still higher privilege. 
And now I come to a part of the institution 
which excited my strongest sympathy and 
admiration. Appended to it is an infant hos- 
pital for the children of the very lowest orders, 
-— children born diseased or deformed, or 



PENITExNTIARIES. 



223 



maimed by accidents, — epileptic, or crippled. 
In this hospital were thirty-two poor suffering 
infants, carefully tended by such of the peni- 
tents as had earned this privilege. On a rainy 
day I found these poor little things taking 
their daily exercise in a long airy corridor. 
Over the clean shining floor was spread tem- 
porarily a piece of coarse grey drugget, that 
their feet might not slip ; and so they were led 
along, creeping, crawling, or trying to walk or 
run, with bandaged heads and limbs, — care- 
fully and tenderly helped and watched by the 
nurses, who were themselves under the super- 
vision of one of the religious Sisters already 
mentioned. 

There is a good dispensary, well supplied 
with common medicines, and served by a 
well instructed Sister of Charity, with the 
help of one of the inmates whom she had 
trained. 

Any inmate is free to leave the Refuge 
whenever she pleases, and may be received a 
second time, but not a third time. 

I was told that when these girls leave the 
institution, after a probation of three or four 



224 THE COMMUx\IOx\ OF LABOR. 

years, there is no difficulty in finding them 
•good places, as servants, cooks, washerwomen, 
and even nurses ; but all do not leave it. 
Those who, after a residence of six years, 
preferred to remain, might do so : they were 
devoted to a religious and laborious life, and 
lived in a part of the building which had a 
sort of conventual sanctity and seclusion. 
They are styled '^les Magdeleines^^ (Magda- 
lens). I saw sixteen of such; and I had the 
opportunity of observing them. They were 
all superior in countenance and organization, 
and belonged apparently to a better class. 
They were averse to re-entering the world, 
had been disgusted and humiliated by their 
bitter experience of vice, and disliked or were 
unfitted for servile occupations. They had a 
manufactory of artificial flowers, were skilful 
embroiderers and needlewomen, and support- 
ed themselves by the produce of their work. 
They were no longer objects of pity or de- 
pendent on charity ; they had become objects 
of respect, — and more than respect, of rev- 
erence. One of them, who had a talent for 
music, Madame de Barol had caused to be 



PENITENTIARIES. 225 

properly instructed : she was the organist of 
the chapel, and the music mistress; she had 
taught several of her companions to sing. 
A piano stood in the centre of the room, and 
they executed a little concert for us; every 
thing was done easily and quietly, without 
effort or display. When I looked in the faces 
of these young women, — the eldest was not 
more than thirty, — so serene, so healthful, 
and in some instances so dignified, I found 
it difficult to recall the depth of misery, deg- 
radation, and disease out of which they had 
risen. 

The whole number of inmates was about 
one hundred and forty, without reckoning the 
thirty-two sick children. Madame de Barol 
said that this infant hospital was a most 
efficient means of thorough reform ; it called 
out what was best in the disposition of the 
penitents, and was indeed a test of the char- 
acter and temper.* 

* The above account of the Penitentiary at Turin, is from 
memoranda made on the spot, and from verbal information in 
November, 1855. 

I have since received (while this sheet is going through the 
press) a letter from a very accomplished and benevolent eccle- 



226 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



If this institution had been more in the 
country, and if some of the penitents (or 
patients), whose robust physique seemed to 
require it, could have been provided with 
plenty of work in the open air, such as gar- 
dening, keeping cows or poultry, &c., I should 
have considered the arrangements, for a Cath- 
olic country, perfect. They are calculated to 
fulfil all the conditions of moral and physical 
convalescence ; early rising ; regular, active, 
useful employment ; thorough cleanliness ; the 
strictest order ; an even, rather cool tempera- 
ture ; abundance of light and fresh air ; and 
more than these, religious hope wisely and 

siastic, containing some farther particulars relative to Madame 
de Barol's Institution. It appears that the number of inmates 
is at present two hundred. 

The Refuge itself, and the ground on which it stands, were 
purchased by the government, after Madame de Barol had 
expended a large sum of money in the original arrangements. 
The government granted 10,000 fr. a year to the necessary 
expenses, and have since made over the Penitentiary to the 
Commonalty of Turin; but the hospital for the children, and 
the convent with the gardens adjoining, have been erected on 
land belonging to Madame de Barol, and at her sole expense. 
The infant hospital contains eighty beds. The whole institu- 
tion is managed by Madame de Barol, and she has the entire 
control of the funds which the city has placed at her disposal, 
in addition to those contributed by herself 



PENITENTIARIES. 227 

kindly cultivated ; companionship, cheerful- 
ness, and the opportunity of exercising the 
sympathetic and benevolent affections. 

If these conditions could be adopted in 
some of the female penitentiaries at home, I 
think failure would be less common ; but 
since the difficulty of redemption is found to 
be so great, should we not take the more 
thought for prevention? Among the causes 
of the evil are some which I should not like to 
touch upon here; but there are others, and 
not the least important, which may be dis- 
cussed without offence. The small payment 
and the limited sphere of employment allotted 
to the women of the working classes are men- 
tioned, by a competent witness, as one of the 
causes of vice leading to crime. " Much I 
believe would be done towards securing the 
virtue of the female sex, and therefore towards 
the general diminution of profligacy, if the 
practical injustice were put an end to by 
which women are excluded from many kinds 
of employment for which they are naturally 
qualified. The general monopoly which the 
members of the stronger sex have established 



228 THE COINIMUxMON OF LABOR. 

for themselves is surely most unjust, and, like 
all other kinds of injustice, recoils on its per- 
petrators." * The same writer observes in 
another place : — " The payment for the labor 
of females in this country is often so small as 
to demand, for obtaining an honest living, a 
greater power of endurance and self-control 
than can reasonably be expected." 

Here, then, is the direct testimony of an 
experienced man, that the more we can em- 
ploy women in work fitted to their powers, 
the stronger the barrier we shall oppose to 
misery and intemperance, and more especially 
to that pestilence " which walketh in dark- 
ness," and to which we can hardly bring our- 
selves to give a name. 



I COME now to an institution peculiar to 
ourselves ; and truly can I affirm that if ever 
the combination of female with masculine 
supervision were imperatively needed, it is in 
an English parish workhouse. Really it is not 

* On Crime, its Amount , Causes, and Remedies, by F 
Hill, p. 85. 



WORKHOUSES. 229 

without a mingled feeling of shame and fear 
that I approach the subject. I shall be told 
that it is very un-English and very unpatriotic 
to expose our social delinquencies, — particu- 
larly as I have just been praising some foreign 
institutions. It is not an excuse for us that 
on some points other nations are as bad as 
ourselves, or worse ; but it is a disgrace to us 
if they are in advance on those very points 
where publicity and freedom of discussion 
ought to have shielded us from mistake. 

I have seen many workhouses, and of all 
grades. The regulation of details varies in 
different parishes. Some are admirably clean, 
and, as far as mere machinery can go, admira- 
bly managed ; some are dirty and ill ven- 
tilated ; and one or two, as we learn from 
recent disclosures, quite in a disgraceful state : 
but whatever the arrangement and condition, 
in one thing I found all alike ; — the want of a 
proper moral supervision. I do not say this in 
the grossest sense ; though even in that sense, 
I have known of things I could hardly speak 
of. But surely I may say there is want of 
proper moral supervision where the most vul- 
20 



230 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

gar of human beings arc set to rule over the 
most vulgar ; where the pauper is set to man- 
age the pauper; where the ignorant govern 
the ignorant; where the aged and infirm min- 
ister to the aged and infirm ; where every 
softening and elevating influence is absent, or 
of rare occurrence, and every hardening and 
depraving influence continuous and ever at 
hand. Never did I visit any dungeon, any 
abode of crime or misery, in any country, 
which left the same crushing sense of sorrow, 
indignation, and compassion, — almost de- 
spair, — as some of our English workhouses. 
Never did I see more clearly what must be the 
inevitable consequences, where the feminine 
and religious influences are ignored; where 
what w^e call charity is worked by a stern, 
hard machinery; where what we mean for 
good is not bestowed but inflicted on others, 
in a spirit not pitiful nor merciful, but reluc- 
tant and adverse, if not cruel. Perhaps those 
who hear me may not all be aware of the 
origin of our parish workhouses. They were 
intended to be religious and charitable institu- 
tions, to supply the place of those conventual 



WORKHOUSES. 231 

hospitals and charities which, with their reve- 
nues, were suppressed by Henry VIIL For 
our Reformation I am thankful, as those 
should be to whom liberty of thought is dear ; 
but I cannot help wishing, with Dr. Arnold, 
that in our country it had been carried out by 
purer minds and cleaner hands ; that " the 
badness of the agents had not disgraced the 
goodness of the cause ; " that in rooting up 
evils and abuses, long rooted charities had not 
also been torn up. I cannot say that as yet 
our parish workhouses have replaced them, in 
this sense. The epithet charitable could never 
be applied to any parish workhouse I have 
seen. Our machine charity is as much charity^ 
in the Christian sense, as the praying machines 
of the Tartars are piety. 

The purpose of a workhouse is to be a 
refuge to the homeless, houseless, helpless 
poor; to nigh t- wanderers ; to orphan children 
to the lame and blind ; to the aged, who here 
lie down on their last bed to die. 

The number of inmates varies in different 
parishes at different seasons, from four hun- 



232 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



dred to one thousand. In the great London 
unions it is generally from fifteen hundred to 
two thousand. 

These institutions are supported by a varia- 
ble tax, paid so reluctantly, with so little sym- 
pathy in its purpose, that the wretched paupers 
seem to be regarded as a sort of parish locusts 
sent to devour the substance of the rate-pay- 
ers, — as the natural enemies of those who are 
taxed for their subsistence, — almost as crimi- 
nals ; and I have no hesitation in saying that 
the convicts in some of our jails have more 
charitable and more respectful treatment than 
the poor in our workhouses : hence a notion 
prevails among the working classes that it is 
better to be a criminal than a pauper ; better 
to go to a jail than a workhouse ; and to all 
appearance it is so. 

The administration of the parish funds for 
the purposes of charity is in the hands of a 
board of parish officers, who are elected^ — but 
I do not know on what principle of selection^ 
— to discharge one of the most sacred trusts 
that can be exercised by any responsible hu- 
man being. 



WORKHOUSES. 233 

Between the poor and their so-called "guar- 
dians," the bond is anything but charity. I 
have known men among them conscientious 
and kindly, and willing to give time and 
trouble ; but in a board of guardians, the 
gentlemen^ that is, the well educated, intelli- 
gent, and compassionate, are generally in a 
minority, and can do little or nothing against 
the passive resistance to all innovation, the 
most obdurate prejudices, the most vulgar 
jealousy. A gentleman who had served the 
office said to me, " I am really unfit to be a 
poor-law guardian; I have some vestige of 
humanity left in me ! " 

Under these guardians are the officials, who 
are brought into immediate contact with the 
poor ; a master and a matron, who keep the 
accounts, distribute food and clothing, and 
keep order. Among them, some are respected 
and loved, others hated or feared ; some are 
kindly and intelligent, others of the lowest 
grade. What were the antecedents of these 
officials, what the qualifications required, and 
upon whom rested the deep responsibility of 
the choice, I never clearly understood. la 
20* 



234 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

one workhouse the master had been a police- 
man ; in another, the keeper of a small public- 
house ; in another, he had served in the same 
workhouse as porter. Where the duties are 
merely mechanical, and nothing required but 
to work the material machinery of a stringent 
system, this may answer very well. The 
subordinates are not of a higher grade, except 
occasionally the schoolmasters and school- 
mistresses, whom I have sometimes found 
struggling to perform their duties, sometimes 
quite unfitted for them, and sometimes re- 
signed to routine and despair. 

In the wards for the old and the sick, the 
intense vulgarity, the melancholy dulness, 
mingled with a strange license and levity, are 
dreadful. I attribute both the dulness and 
the levity to the total absence of the religious 
and the feminine element. 

But you will say, how can the religious 
element be wanting ? Is there not always a 
chaplain ? The chaplain has seemed to me, 
in such places, rather a religious accident, 
than a religious element ; when most good 
and zealous, his can be no constant and per- 



(I 



WORKHOUSES. 235 

vading influence. "When he visits a ward to 
read and pray once a week, perhaps there is 
decorum in his presence; the oaths, the curses, 
the vile language cease, the vulgar strife is si- 
lenced, — to recommence the moment his back 
is turned. I know one instance in which the 
chaplain had been ill for two months, and no 
one had supplied his place, except for the 
Sunday services, where the bed-ridden poor 
cannot attend. I remember an instance in 
which the chaplain had requested that the 
poor profligate women might be kept out of 
his way: — they had, indeed, shown them- 
selves somewhat obstreperous and irreverent.* 
I saw, not long ago, a chaplain of a great 
workhouse so dirty and shabby, that I should 
have mistaken him for one of the paupers. 
In doing his duty he would fling a surplice 
over his dirty, torn coat, kneel down at the 
entrance of a ward, not even giving himself 

* Perhaps lie was not so much to blame. *' Over the 
younger women in workhouses authority is powerless ; they 
will not listen to the clergymen, even could he specially ad- 
dress himself to them. I do not know how these are to be 
reached by any existing means." Such is the testimony of 
an exemplary clergyman, a chaplain in a workhouse. 



236 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

the trouble to advance to the middle of the 
room, hurry over two or three prayers, heard 
from the few beds nearest to him, and then, 
off to another ward. The salary of this priest 
for the sick and the poor was twenty pounds a 
year. This, then, is the religious element ; — 
as if religion were not the necessary, in- 
separable, ever-present, informing spirit of a 
Christian charitable institution, but rather 
something extraneous and occasional, to be 
taken in set doses at set times. To awaken 
the faith, to rouse the conscience, to heal the 
broken in spirit, to light up the stupefied facul- 
ties of a thousand unhappy, ignorant, debased 
human beings congregated together, — can a 
chaplain going his weekly rounds suffice for 
this ? 

Then, as to the feminine element, I will 
describe it. In a great and well ordered 
workhouse, under conscientious management, 
I visited sixteen wards, in each ward from 
fifteen to twenty-five sick, aged, bed-ridden, 
or, as in some cases, idle and helpless poor. 
In each ward all the assistance given and all 
the supervision were in the hands of one nurse* 



\YORKHOUSES. 237 

and a " helper," both chosen from among the 
pauper women who were supposed to be the 
least immoral and drunken. The ages of 
the nurses might be from sixty-five to eighty ; 
the assistants were younger.* I recollect see- 
ing, in a provincial workhouse, a ward in 
which were ten old women, all helpless and 
bed-ridden : to nurse them was a decrepit old 
woman of seventy, lean, and withered, and 
feeble ;f and her assistant was a girl with one 
eye, and scarcely able to see with the other. 
In a ward where I found eight paralyzed old 
women, the nurse being equally aged, the 
helper was a girl who had lost the use of one 
hand. Only the other day, I saw a pauper 
nurse in a sick w^ard who had a wooden leg. 
I remember no cheerful faces : when the fea- 

* " The number of inmates under medical treatment in tlie 
year 1854 in the London workhouses, was over fifty thousand, 
omitting one workhouse (the Marylebone). There are seventy 
paid nurses, and five hundred pauper nurses and assistants. 
One half of these nurses are above fifty, one quarter above 
sixty, many not less than seventy, and some more than 
eighty years old." 

t As the unpaid pauper nurses have some little additional 
allowance of tea or beer, it is not unusual for the medical 
attendant to send such poor, feeble, old women as require 
some little indulgence to be nurses in the sick wards. 



238 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



tures and deportment were not debased by 
drunkenness, or stupidity, or ill-humor, they 
were melancholy, or sullen, or bloated, or 
harsh : — and these are the Sisters of Charity 
to whom our sick poor are confided ! 

In one workhouse the nurses had a penny 
a week and extra beer; in another the al- 
lowance had been a shilling a month, but 
recently withdrawn by the guardians from 
motives of economy. The matron told me 
that while this allowance continued, she could 
exercise a certain power over the nurses, — 
she could stop their . allowance if they did 
not behave well; now she has no hold on 
them ! In another workhouse, I asked the 
matron to point out one whom she con- 
sidered the best conducted and most efficient 
nurse. She pointed to a crabbed, energetic- 
looking old woman : " She is active, and 
cleanly, and to be depended on so long as we 
can keep her from drink. But they all drink ! 
"Whenever it is their turn to go out for a 
few hours they come back intoxicated, and 
have to be put to bed : " — put to bed intox 
icated in the wards they are set to rule over! 



WORKHOUSES. 239 

The patients often hate the nurses, and 
have not fear or respect enough to prevent 
thenri from returning their bad language 
and abuse. Of the sort of attention paid 
to helpless creatures under their care you 
may perhaps form some idea. I know that 
in one workhouse a poor woman could get 
no help but by bribery ; any little extra 
allowance of tea or sugar left by pitying 
friends went in this manner. The friends 
and relations, themselves poor, who came to 
visit some bed-ridden parent, or maimed hus- 
band, or idiotic child, generally brought some 
trifle to bribe the nurses ; and I have heard 
of a nurse who made five shillings a week 
by thus fleecing the poor inmates and their 
friends in pennies and sixpences. Those 
who would not pay this tax were neglected, 
and implored in vain to be turned in their 
beds. The matron knows that these things 
exist, but she has no power to prevent them ; 
she exercises no moral authority; she sees that 
the beds are clean, the floor daily scoured, the 
food duly distributed ; what tyranny may be 
exercised in her absence by these old hags, 



240 



THE COMISIUNION OF LABOR. 



her deputies, she has no means of knowing ; 
for the wretched creatures dare not complain, 
knowing how it would be visited upon them. 
I will not now torture you by a description 
of what I know to have been inflicted and 
endured in these abodes of pauperism, — 
the perpetual scolding, squabbling, swearing. 
Neither peace, nor forbearance, nor mutual 
respect is there, nor reverence, nor gratitude. 
What perhaps has shocked me most was to 
discover, in the corner of one of these wards, 
a poor creature who had seen better days; 
to be startled when I went up to speak 
to one whose features or countenance had 
attracted me, by being answered in the 
unmistakeable tone and language of the 
well-bred and the well-born ; and this has 
happened to me, not once, but several times. 
I never can understand why some discrimi- 
nation should not be shown, unless it be 
that not one of those employed is of a 
grade, mental or moral, to be entrusted with 
such a power of discrimination. It is thought 
that no distinction ought to be made, where 
the necessary condition of entrance — poverty 



WORKHOUSES. 241 

— is common to all; that no more regard 
should be had in the workhouse to the causes 
and antecedents of poverty than in a prison 
to the causes and antecedents of crime. Then 
there is the rule, that this refuge for the poor 
man is to be made as distasteful to the poor 
man as possible. But cannot some means 
be used to exclude the undeserving? Why 
should this last home of the poor be not only 
distasteful but deteriorating ? 

In some workhouses many who can w^ork 
will not, and there is no power to compel 
them. In others, the inmates are confined 
to such labor as is degrading and disgraceful, 

— the sort of labor which is a punishment 
in prisons, — which excites no faculty of at- 
tention, or hope, or sympathy, — which con- 
templates neither utility nor improvement, — 
such as picking oakum, &c. ; and this lest 
there should exist some kind of competition 
injurious to tradesmen. Now this is surely 
a cruel and short-sighted policy, equally un- 
just and injurious.* 

* See Dixon's Life of Howard for an account of the changes 
introduced by Joseph II. into the Maison de Force at Ghent. 
21 



242 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

Besides the sick and the miserable, there 
are also to be found the vicious, the reck- 
less, the utterly depraved; and I could not 
discover that there is any system of gentle 
religious discipline which aimed at the 
reforming of the bad, or the separation 
of the bad from the good, except in one 
of our great metropolitan workhouses. The 
depraved women bring contamination with 
them ; the unwed mothers, who come to 
lie-in, go out laughing, with a promise to 
come again ; and they do come again and 
again for the same purpose. The loudest 
tongues, the most violent tempers, the she- 
bullies as they are called, always are the 
best off; the gentler spirit sinks down, lies 
still, perhaps for six, or eight, or twelve 
years, — I have seen such, — and so waits 
for death. 

When it was said that in a certain work- 
All work -was discontinued which, could interfere with the 
interests of the manufacturers. Idleness introduced disease 
and vice. The rooms were to be less clean and comfortable. 
The sojourn was to be made as disagreeable as possible. The 
result was found to be dreadfully demoralizing to the inmates, 
and not serviceable to those whom it was intended to protect. 



WORKHOUSES. 243 

house the out-door relief bestowed had been 
distributed to creatures penned up for hours 
in foul air, who had waited for the bread 
doled out with curses, and received with 
sullen unthankfulness, as if they had been 
dogs; the answer was, that many of these 
unhappy beings had become, from their per- 
verted instincts, their fierce natures, and base 
insolence, and servile cunning, little better 
than brutes; and that "it was compliment- 
ing them too highly to compare them to 
dogs." But what has made them so? It 
is the system of which I complain, which 
brings a vulgar and a brutal power to bear 
on vulgarity and brutality, the bad and de- 
fective organization to bear on one bad and 
defective ; so you increase, and multiply, and 
excite as in a hot-bed all the material of 
evil, instead of neutralizing it with good ; 
and thus leavened you turn it out on so- 
ciety to contaminate all around.* "What has 



* That I may not be accused of exaggeration, I refer to the 
excellent lecture of the Rev. J. S. Brewer, for many years a 
workhouse chaplain. — See Lectures to Ladies on Practical 
Subjects, p. 271. 



244 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

ground humanity out of them, but a system 
which ignores the force of the natural and 
domestic relations, and trusts to no influence 
but a mere machinery ? A keeper of a 
prison once relating how his wife had at 
last reformed a notorious drunkard, who 
had been many times in prison, and was 
considered incorrigible, — " Ma'am," said he, 
" she mithered him so that he could not help 
reforming ; he got to dread her sair face more 
than a policeman or a sheriff." This reminds 
me of the speech of the poor wounded soldier 
to one of the lady nurses at Kulali : " You 
are as good to me as a mother," said he, 
looking up in her face, " and better than a 
mother for all that I know!" A great, tall, 
working man was pouring out some do- 
mestic story to a friend of mine, when, stop- 
ping short, he said, " I beg your pardon, 
ma'am, but I was just speaking out to you 
as if you were my sister! " Now it is just 
this motherly and sisterly influence which I 
want to see carried out into the social re- 
lations ; and I am persuaded that something 
of the mother's authority and the sister's 



« 



WORKHOUSES. 245 

tenderness does sanctify every woman in the 
eyes of men where she is called upon and 
authorized to work out social good. All the 
ladies who went to the East bear uniform 
testimony to the excellent feeling of the poor 
men towards them. ^' Their submission and 
respect were quite filial, almost childlike," said 
one of these ladies with emotion. 

These soldiers had probably no other idea 
of a lady than might be gained from a distant 
sight of their officers' wives, in riding habits, 
figuring at a review. The effect therefore 
which genuine ladyhood, dignified, quiet, re- 
fi^ned, compassionate, produced on their minds 
when brought into daily intimate relation with 
them, was that mingled admiration and rever- 
ence, which the good of each sex ought to feel 
for the other, which the real lady will always 
inspire. These soldiers, we are told, could 
think and speak of nothing but " angels," just 
descended to earth, and would not have been 
much more astonished had these " angels " 
suddenly returned to Heaven through the roof 
or through the window. But the time will 
come when these things will excite as much 
21* 



246 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

love and reverence, and less astonishment. 
The same observations apply to the ministry 
of ladies in a workhouse.* 

I should say, from what I have seen, that it 
is in the men's wards of the workhouses, and 
yet more especially those of the boys, that 
female supervision is required, and where lady 
visitors would do essential good. Will they 

* " The workhouse poor do sometimes see the more respect- 
able portion of the male sex ; the house is periodically yisited 
"by the vestry; the rector occasionally goes round. There are 
boards and board meetings, and before these the inmates are 
allowed to prefer their complaints. But the best of the female 
sex they never see. They do not know what ladies are, except 
as they are spoken of as the mistresses of a house or the em- 
ployers of servants. For the London workhouse poor, — I 
speak of course within the limits of what I know, — belong 
mainly tcr the class which has never come in contact with the 
upper classes of society." 

He speaks in another place of the " insensible influence 
which the mere presence of ladies, their voice, their common 
words, their ordinary manners, their thoughts, all that they 
carry unconsciously about them, can exercise on the poor; 
but this applies to real ladies, cultivated, gentle, well-born, 
well-bred, not to vulgar, pretentious, meddling women calling 
themselves ladies. ' There is no people more alive, to gentle 
blood and gentle manners than the English poor; ' and it is 
not by undervaluing such distinctions, but making use of 
them, that you will prevail." (See the whole of this Lecture 
on Workhouse Visiting,* the result of the Experience of a 
Workhouse Chaplain. — Lectures to Ladies, p. 273-281.) 



4 



WORKHOUSES. 247 

venture there ? or will they think it " very im- 
proper ? '' 

I was lately in a workhouse ward contain- 
ing twenty -two beds ; twenty-one were filled 
with poor decrepit old women in the last 
stage of existence. The nurse was, as usual, 
a coarse old hag. In the twenty-second bed 
was a young person of better habits, who had 
been an invalid, but was not helpless ; she 
was there because she had no home to go to. 
There was no shelf or drawer near her bed to 
place anything in ; this was not allowed, lest 
spirits should be concealed. The book she was 
reading, — anything she wished to keep for 
herself, — was deposited in her bed, or under 
it; nothing was done for comfort, and very 
little for decency. The power of retiring for a 
little space from all these eyes and tongues 
was quite out of the question ; and so it was 
everywhere. A poor, decent old woman, sink- 
ing into death, in a ward where there were 
twenty-five other inmates, wished to be read 
to ; but there was no one to do this. She 
thought she would try to bribe one of the 
others to read to her, by the offer of "a 



248 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

hap'orth of snufF; " but even this would not 
do.* 

I may not farther dwell upon details at 
present ; but I would ask whether such a state 
of things could exist if some share in the ad- 
ministration and supervision of workhouses 
were in the hands of intelligent and refined 
women whose aid should be voluntary ? Why 
should not our parish workhouses be so many 
training schools, where women might learn 
how to treat the sick and poor, and learn by 
experience something of the best means of 
administration and management? 

I see that, in one of our large London 
parishes, (in a workhouse which, a few months 
ago, was conspicuous for the most disgraceful 
mismanagement, and held up to public indig- 
nation,) a committee of lady-visitors has been 
allowed to look over the wards. This will do 
good in individual cases ; but what is wanted 

♦ *' It is the insolence of its officials, and the insubordina- 
tion of its inmates, that make the poorhouse (what we have 
heard respectable paupers call it) a hell upon earth. It is 
intolerable that an asylum established by law, instead of 
being made formidable to the bad by the order it enforces, 
should be made revolting to the good by the license it per- 
mits." — Quarterly Review ^ Sept. 1855. 



I 



WORKHOUSES. 249 

is a domestic, permanent, ever-present influ- 
ence^ not occasional inspection. It is, however, 
a step in the right direction. We must re- 
member that lady- visitors, to do good, must 
be properly authorized and organized, — must 
work in concert, lest they contradict and inter- 
fere with each other. The bristling jealousy 
of sub-officials, must be soothed ; the scruples 
about interfering with established powers have 
to be surmounted by sense, and kindness, and 
decision ; there must be over all a supreme 
and harmonizing power ; or the whole arrange- 
ment will fall asunder like ill-fitting bricks 
without cement. Of the possible mischief 
that may be done by ignorant, over-zealous, 
self-confident, excitable women, I shudder to 
think; and of the use that may be made of 
such failures to injure a good cause ; yet were 
the experiment to fail twenty times over ere it 
succeed, it would never shake my conviction 
that the principle I advocate must be carried 
out at last ; that it is God's law, by obedience 
to which we shall be saved ; by neglect of 
which we perish. 



250 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



I HAVE not found in my limited travels any 
institutions exactly similar to our workhouses, 
that is, charitable institutions supported by 
enforced contributions. There are, however, 
two institutions at Turin which struck me as 
very remarkable, and which may be said, each 
in its way, to fulfil some of the purposes for 
which our workhouses were original insti- 
tuted. 

One of these is a community of women 
called Rosvnes, from the name of their founder, 
Rosa Governo, who had been a servant girl. 
It cannot be styled a religious community, in 
the usual sense, as neither vows nor seclusion 
are required; it is a working joint-stock com- 
pany, with a strong interfusion of the religious 
element, without which I believe it could not 
have held together. Here I found, wonderful 
to tell, nearly four hundred women of all ages, 
from fifteen and upwards, living together in a 
very extensive, clean, airy building (or rather 
assemblage of buildings, for they had added 
one house to another), maintaining themselves 
by their united labor, and carrying on a variety 
of occupations, as tailoring, embroidery (espe- 



FEMALE COMMUNITt AT TURIN. 251 

cially the embroidery of military accoutre- 
ments for the army), weaving, spinning, shirt- 
making, lace-making, — every thing, in short, 
in which female ingenuity could be employed. 
They have a large, well-kept garden ; a school 
for the poor children of the neighborhood ; an 
infirmary, including a ward for those whose 
age had exempted them from work ; a capital 
dispensary, with a small medical library ; here 
I found one of the women preparing some 
medicines, and another studying intently a 
French medical work. 

This female community is much respected 
in Turin, and has flourished for more than a 
century. It is entirely self-supported, and the 
yearly revenue averages between 70,000 and 
80,000 francs. The women are ruled by a 
superior, elected from among themselves, and 
in their workrooms were divided into classes, 
or groups, each under direction of a monitress 
to keep order. The rules of admission and 
entrance and the interior regulations are strict. 
Any inmate may leave at once whenever she 
pleases, but (as I understood) cannot be re- 
admitted. The costume, which is that worn 



252 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

by the lower classes in 1740, when the com- 
munity was foiyided, is not becoming, but 
not very peculiar. All looked clean and 
cheerful. 

I have been assured by some of my friends, 
who ought to understand these matters, that 
such an institution would be " quite impossi- 
ble " in England, because the education given 
to the girls of the working class renders it 
" quite impossible " for a number of them to 
dwell together in unity, or in voluntary sub- 
mission to a controlling power. If it be so, 
so much the worse ! — but is it so ? 

The other institution I have alluded to, is 
yet more extraordinary, and of recent origin. 

A few years ago a poor priest, who had 
served as chaplain in a hospital, being struck by 
the dreadful state of the convalescent women, 
who, after being dismissed as cured while 
yet too weak for labor, were obliged to have 
recourse to vice or to starve, fitted up a garret 
with four old half-rotten bedsteads, into which 
he received four wretched, sick, sinful crea- 
tures, and begged for their support. Such 



m 



CHARITABLE INSTITUTION AT TURIN. 253 

was the beginning of the " Casa della divina 
Providenza^^^ called also"L<^ Casa Cotolengo^^^ 
from the name of its founder, who died about 
two years ago. 

When I visited this extraordinary place, I 
found that the garret and its four old bed- 
steads had gradually extended to many ranges 
of buildings, for different purposes.* There is 
a hospital with two hundred beds ; another 
hospital especially for wretched, diseased 
women out of the streets; another for chil- 
dren, containing fifty beds ; a refuge for for- 
saken infants ; a small school for deaf and 
dumb (children and others) ; a ward especially 
for epileptic patients and cretins. The atten- 
dance on this vast congregation of sick and 
suffering beings is voluntary, and considered 
by the physicians, nurses, and sisters as an act 
of religion. There were about two hundred 
attendants, men and women. The number 
of inmates constantly varied, and no regular 
account was kept of them : one day it was 
calculated to be about thirteen hundred, pa- 

* The original " four old bedsteads " are preserved in me- 
moriam, and were pointed out to me. 

22 



254 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

tients and nurses all included. The deaths 
are about six daily. All who would be 
rejected from other hospitals, who have in- 
curable, horrid, chronic diseases, who are in 
the last stage of helpless, hopeless misery, 
come here ; none are ever turned away. 
There are no funds^ and no accounts are kept ; 
nor, I must confess, is there any of the order 
and neatness of a regular hospital. All the 
citizens of Turin, more especially the poorer 
class, contribute something ; and so " one day 
telleth another." " We trust to Divine Prov- 
idence, and have hitherto wanted for nothing," 
was the reply to my inquiry. " Sometimes 
our coifer is empty, sometimes it is full. If 
we are poor to-day, we shall be richer to-mor- 
row. God helps us ! " 

In England, a political economist or a poor- 
law commissioner would have been thrown 
into fits by such a spectacle of slovenly char- 
ity. Too true it is : — 

" The wise want love, and they who love want wisdom; 
And all good things are thus confused to ill! " 



f 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 255 

And now, having shown what an extensive 
field there is for work, what are the qualifi- 
cations required in the workers ? It is plain 
that mere kindly impulses and self-confidence 
(so different from practical benevolence and 
tender, humble faith ! ) will not suffice. By 
what means are we to prepare and discipline 
our women for the work they may be called 
to perform ? What has been done, what may 
be done, to render them fitting helpmates for 
energetic and benevolent men, and instru- 
ments of beneficent power? These are mo- 
mentous questions, which we have now to 
consider. 

The complaint has become threadbare ; yet 
I must begin by noticing the mere fact as 
such. There is no adequate provision for 
the practical educe tion of the middle and 
lower classes of girls in this country; and 
(which is much worse) the importance of 
this want is either overlooked, or at least no 
one in power thinks it worth while to treat 
this part of educational statics with any 
particular attention. Open the books and 
pamphlets on national education, read the 



256 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

speeches of our legislators, the clever leading 
articles in our journals ; everywhere it is 
the same. The education of boys for pro- 
fessional and practical life, the sort of in- 
struction which is to fit them for such and 
such civil or military employments, are always 
discussed as of the highest importance ; and 
the provision already made is, we are assured, 
not nearly sufficient. What shall be said of 
the general tone of feeling and opinion with 
regard to the education of women ? is it less 
important than that of men ? I will not go 
into the extreme opinions of those who argue 
that it is even more important, inasmuch as 
women being the mothers of the human 
ra6e, a very large portion of their mental 
and moral organization must pass into that 
of their offspring. The saying of the wise 
philosopher, " All our able men have had 
able mothers," is, however, so generally true, 
that the few exceptions only prove the rule. 
Here I would merely suggest, that a sound 
practical education preparatory to the duties 
and business of real life is of as much im- 
portance to women as to men, and ought not 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 2^57 

to be treated as comparatively inisignificant, 
as merely accidental or accessory to the edu- 
cation of the other sex.* The tone of in- 
difference assumed on this point, and the 
comparatively small means afforded, is a 
mistake for which we shall pay dearly.f It 
unites with other causes in lowering the 
standard of opinion in respect to women, 
besides being more directly injurious. I am 



* In the year 1854, out of 159,727 marriages, 47,843 males 
and 68,175 females signed the marriage register by making 
their mark. In 1848, the proportion was the same : 43,166 
males and 62,771 females were unable to write their names. 
So that the number of uneducated women is one third greater 
than the number of uneducated men. There remains, then, 
the astounding fact, that out of nearly 80,000 women who 
approached the altar, 68,175 could not write their names. 

t The North British Review for June last, which I had not 
seen when this Lecture was written, contains an article en- 
titled ''Outrages on Women," already referred to (p. 161). 
In this excellent essay, the custom — must we call it so ? — of 
** wife-beating " is attributed not merely to ruffianism on the 
part of the man, but to the miserable, untidy, unhealthy 
dwellings of the poor, and the uncontrolled tempers, ig- 
norance of what are called *' common things," and want of 
all training in wifely and womanly duties and responsibilities, 
on the part of the women. If they have " aggravating 
tongues," and are unthrifty and untidy, having been taught 
no better, it is not a sufficient reason why they should be 
beaten, kicked, stamped upon; but it is a cause which should 
be taken into consideration by our legislators and educators. 
22* 



258 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



t 



acquainted with several of those ladies who 
had to select the hired nurses sent out to 
the East, and they could make terrible reve- 
lations on this subject. Out of the hundreds 
of women who offered themselves, it was 
scarcely possible to find a tenth of the 
number fit to be sent out; and more than 
the half of that number disgraced themselves, 
or were found useless when there. The ig- 
norance, the incompetency, the slowness of 
the unexercised reasoning powers ; the want 
of judgment and of thought which made 
it impossible for them to direct, the violent 
insubordinate tempers which made it im- 
possible for them to obey, rendered them the 
plague of the authorities. Their degraded 
.habits made them unfit to be trusted in the 
men's hospitals. They w^ere drunken as 
well as dissolute, and the lady nurses felt 
themselves disgraced as Englishwomen and 
Christians in the eyes of the stranger and 
unbeliever. This was the case with two 
thirds of the hired nurses, and with almost 
all the soldiers' wives, very few of whom I 
believe were found available for any useful 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 259 

purpose. These women had all been in 
schools of one sort or another, — national 
schools, Sunday schools, — and this was the 
result. 

Now I will tell you, as an illustration, what 
I have seen only very lately. I was in a very 
large parish union, where there were about 
four hundred children, nearly an equal number 
of boys and girls ; and schools for both. The 
boys had an excellent master for reading and 
writing, and had masters besides, to teach 
them various trades. There was a tailor, 
a carpenter, a shoemaker, a hairdresser, a 
plumber, who, at wages from twenty-five to 
thirty-five shillings a week, were employed to 
instruct the boys in their respective trades. 
The girls were taught reading, writing, and 
sewing ; some of them, under the pauper 
menials, helped to scour and scrub. The over- 
tasked, anxious mistress seemed to do her 
best ; but there was not sufficient assistance. 
The whole system was defective and depress- 
ing, and could not by any possibility turn out 
efficient domestic servants, or well-disciplined, 
religious-minded, cheerful-tempered girls. I 



260 THE COxMMUNION OF LABOR. 

was informed that, of the boys sent out of 
this workhouse, about two per cent, returned 
to the parish in want or unserviceable ; while 
of the girls they reckoned that about fifty per 
cent, were returned to them ruined and de- 
praved.* Remember, I do not give you this 
as a general state of things in workhouse 
schools, but merely as an illustration of the 
prevalent opinion as to the sort of instruction 



* On my repeating this official testimony to some friends of 
mine, it was received with incredulous horror. I have since 
found it fearfully corroborated by two other witnesses. 

'* Various metropolitan workhouses (St. George's, Hanover 
Square, excepted) caused their refractory paupers to be com- 
mitted to Cold Bath Fields, up to September, 1850, and we 
witnessed in the demeanor of young girls, from twenty years 
of age and upwards, such revolting specimens of workhouse 
education, that the exhibition was at once frightful and dis- 
gusting. The inconceivable wickedness of those girls was 
absolutely appalling." — {Colonel Chesterton.) 

To this testimony from the governor of a prison I add that 
of Mr. Brewer, chaplain of one of our great workhouses. He 
says that the disorderly girls and boys in our streets " are 
mainly the produce of the workhouse and the workhouse 
schools. Over them society has no hold, because they have 
been taught to feel that they have nothing in common with 
their fellow men. Their experience is not of a home or of 
parents, but of a workhouse and a governor, — of a prison and 
a gaoler as hard and rigid as either." — {Lectures to Ladies 
on Practical Subjects, p. 279.) Is this, theD,^one of the results 
of our parish charities ? 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 261 

which is fitting and necessary for pauper 
boys, compared with that which is thought 
sufficient for pauper girls, and the result in 
both cases. 

The education given to many of our girls 
of the higher, even the highest classes, is far 
better calculated to- turn out efficient working 
women, than in those classes who are sup- 
posed to be born to labor. I think that in a 
general way they are too well instructed in all 
they have to avoid, and too little instructed in 
all they have to do ; still, where the tone of 
the mind is raised by an acquaintance with 
art and literature, where the intellect has been 
exercised from childhood, where temper has 
been restrained, at least from habitual good 
manners, if not from higher motives, we have 
something better to begin with than the low 
principles, vacant minds, animal propensities, 
and utter undisciplined tempers of the girls 
who are intended for " service." But I am 
glad to see that these evils are awakening 
every day more and more attention.* 

* See " Remarks on the Education of Girls," by Bessie 
Rayner Parkes. Third edition. 



262 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



It is a serious objection to present modes of 
education in both sexes, that nothing is done 
with the important aim of enabling them to 
understand each other, and work together har- 
moniously and trustfully in after-life. There 
seems, however, to exist among us an awaken- 
ing and extending conviction that something 
of this is necessary, and that the complete 
separation of boys and girls in their early 
education, while yet children, is a great mis- 
take, and a source of infinite unhappiness and 
immoralitv.* Thev are not accustomed to 



* On this point I have spoken out else^vliere, and I repeat 
it here. While children, — till eleven or rkvelve years old, at 
least, — boys and girls ought to be accustomed to learn to- 
gether, play together, eat together, to be mutually forbearing, 
helpful, and kind to each other. More of the happiness and 
morality of theii' after-life depends on their childish hcibits 
than people would well believe. It was never contemplated, 
by the natural law of domestic life, that the two halves of 
humanity were created to be a mischief to each other. Such 
was not God's design : "male and female created he them " 
for wise and beneficent purposes. (Common-place Book, 
2d edition, p. 217.) See also, on this point, the testimony of 
an experienced schoolmaster, who has devoted, a whole chap- 
ter to the subject. ("Stow on the Training System ;" I 
think, the sixth edition of that admirable and practical book. ) 
A friend wi'ites to me : " We heard the idea highly commended 
the other day by the master of the large Idiot school at Reigate. 
He says the mixture of little boys and girls there has been of 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 263 

each other, and when they are afterwards 
associated together in the labors of life, they 
have not been prepared for such communion 
by early childish habits of mutual dependence 
and mutual good will, such as the law of 
nature contemplated in domestic life, to which 
all education should as far as possible be 
assimilated. Thus, each sex herded together 
in separate schools, the faults of each are 
increased ; and nothing is done in the system 
of teaching to supply by principle the incon- 
gruities of feeling and habits, and ignorance 
of each other, produced and fostered by this 
dreadful mistake ; so when called upon to 
act in communion, unless bound together by 
some external conventional law, there is 
mutual restraint, mutual mistrust, if not a 
positive shrinking asunder ; and this is a 
great evil in itself, and the cause of unnum- 
bered evils in its social effects. 



great service ; and he mentioned one small instance of the 
good manners of the boys resulting from it, which from these 
poor creatures I thought was striking : ' When walking out 
two and two, of their own accord they formed into single file, 
politely making room for the girls to pass.' " 



264 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

But suppose the necessity for a better and 
more sympathetic education for all conceded, 
and suppose it even already provided for by 
more enlightened public opinion, there remain 
some special and plausible objections against 
the training of women for active, and social, 
and responsible avocations, such as I have 
pointed out. Of these objections, which I 
have often had to listen to, three only appear 
to me worth a moment's attention. 

And first, you hear people say, quite senten- 
tiously, " I object to anything which takes a 
woman out of her home, and removes her 
from the sphere of domestic duty." So do I ! 
I object strongly to anything which takes a 
woman out of her proper sphere, out of a 
happy and congenial home, where her pres- 
ence is delightful and her services necessary: 
there is her first duty. I object also to every 
thing which takes away a man from his first 
duty, the protection and support of his home. 
Let us bear in mind, that for every man who 
does not provide a home, there must exist a 
woman who must make or find a home for 
herself, somehow and somewhere. There 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 265 

seems to be no objection to taking the lower* 
classes of women out of their homes to 
be domestic servants, milliners, shop-women, 
factory-girls, and the better educated to be 
governesses. Then why should the objection 
be urged, merely with respect to other em- 
ployments, only because they are as yet 
rather unusual, or at least not yet recognized 
among us, but which are of a far more ele- 
vated kind ? 

Then there is much sentimental speech of 
women being educated "to adorn a home," to 
be a " good wife," " a good mother. " And 
how many women are there who have no 
home, who are neither wives nor mothers, nor 
never will be while they live? Will you deny 
to them the power to carry into a wider 
sphere the duties of home, — the wifely, 
motherly, sisterly instincts, which bind them 
to the other half of the human race? Must 
these be utterly crushed ; or may they not be 
expanded and gratified healthily, innocently, 
usefully ? This, surely, is at least worth con- 
sidering, before we allow the force of an 
23 



266 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



• objection which seems to consist in phrases 
rather than in arguments. 



A second objection, which I have heard 
chiefly from medical men, is, that the women 
of the educated classes, from which our vol- 
unteers are to be taken, are in general feeble, 
over-refined, and excitable, apt to take fancies 
to individuals where their aid and attention 
ought to be impartial and general, too self- 
confident for obedience, too sensitive to be 
trusted. That these objections apply to 
many women I have no doubt; that they 
apply to women generally I deny. Medical 
men have much more experience of the in- 
valided and feeble portion of the sex, than of 
the healthful portion. They know the fatal 
influence which some of our conventional 
customs, and an ill understood physical edu- 
cation, have on the general health and de- 
velopment of girls. The sick fancies of idle, 
disappointed, desponding women give abun- 
dant occupation to clever physicians, who are 
satisfied to deal with the immediate physical 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 267 

causes of disease, without troubling them- 
selves with the antecedent and remote moral 
causes ; so it is very natural that they should 
have great pity for us, but not much respect. 
Few of them are sufficiently large minded 
to perceive that the service of a better order of 
women in our public institutions, by giving 
employment to the unoccupied faculties and 
feelings, would be a means of improved health 
and cheerfulness not only in themselves but in 
others, and that if women were trained and 
prepared by a sufficient study and probation, 
they w^ould be made efficient and practical. 

I have heard medical men, who were in 
the Crimea, express their conviction that a 
trial of English lady volunteer nurses must 
end in total failure, and who at the same 
time were loud and emphatic in their ad- 
miration of the Roman Catholic Sisters of 
Charity. The objection then, apparently, is 
not against women in general, but against 
English women in particular, brought up in 
the Protestant faith. Now, do they mean to 
say that there is anything in the Roman 
Catholic religion which produces these effi- 



268 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

cient women ? or that it is impossible to train 
any other women to perform the same duties 
with the same cahn and quiet efficiency, the 
same zeal and devotion? Really I do not see 
that feminine energy and efficiency belong to 
any one section of the great Christian com- 
munity. 

And now for the third objection; it is thus 
put : — 

" Would you make charity a profession ? " 
Why not? why should not charity be a 
profession in our sex, just in so far [and no 
farther^ as religion is a profession in yours! 
If a man attires himself in a black surplice, 
ascends a pulpit, and publicly preaches re- 
ligion, are we, therefore, to suppose that his 
religious profession is merely a profession, 
instead of a holy, heartfelt vocation? If a 
woman puts on a grey gown, and openly 
takes upon herself the blessed duty of. caring 
for the sick, the poor, the perverted, are we 
therefore to suppose that charity is with her 
merely a profession? Here we have surely a 
distinction without a difference! No doubt 



ll 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 269 

we should all be religious, whether we assume 
the outward garb or not; no doubt we should 
all be charitable, whether in white, black, or 
grey; but why should not charity assume 
functions publicly recognized, — openly, yet 
quietly and modestly exercised ? Why is fe- 
male influence always supposed to be secret, 
underhand, exercised in some way which is 
not to appear? — till even our good deeds 
borrow the piquancy of intrigue, and we are 
told practically to seek the shade, till morally 
we fear the light ? Why can we not walk 
bravely, honestly, and serenely, yet simply and 
humbly, along the path we have chosen, or to 
which it hath pleased God to call us, instead 
of creeping about in a spirit of fear, as if quite 
overcome by the sense of our own wonderful 
merits, and obliged to throw over them a veil 
of conventional humility ? 

Our pretension to such avocations, as I have 
mentioned, may possibly be met by just the 
same arguments which fifty years ago were 
launched against "literary ladies;" and if 
sneers at " blue stockings," and female pedants 
23* 



270 THE COMxMUNlON OF LABOR. 

could have turned women from the cultivation 
of their minds, and crushed every manifesta- 
tion of genius, no doubt it Vvould have been 
done. Luckily, two admirable and gifted 
men, — Professor Playfair, with his profound 
science, and tender, generous feeling, and 
Sydney Smith, with all the force of his strong 
masculine sense, and all the splendor of his 
wit, — came to our rescue at a most critical 
period. The former claimed for us the depart- 
ment of science ; the latter, that of literature 
and independent thought. This is twenty or 
thirty years ago. There are men now, equally 
manly and far-sighted, eager to instruct us 
and sustain us in well doing, eager to recog- 
nize in us fellow-laborers by divine appoint- 
ment, companions by the grace of God, without 
whom no step in social progress can be attain- 
ed, no lasting good achieved. 

The commencement of a college for working 
women, the difficulties it has had to contend 
witli, and its progress up to this time, are sig- 
nal illustrations of the existence of the " great 
want" of which I have spoken, and the hopes 
and purposes which are filling thoughtful, 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 271 

active, beneJ&cent minds. Shall I tell you 
what in this noble design has struck me with 
the deepest emotion, the deepest thankful- 
ness? It is the interest with which men of 
the working class and professional men have 
received it. The former, when consulted, 
" spoke," Mr. Maurice says, " with remarkable 
freedom and intelligence : we gathered a great 
many more hints and opinions than we had at 
all expected." There were differences of opin- 
ion in respect to arrangements and details, 
but " entire unanimity on the main question. 
There was no indication whatever of the 
slightest fear that females should know as 
much as they themselves knew, or more than 
they knew. There was a manifest wish that 
they should have the same advantages. There 
was a distinct and positive call upon us, not 
to withhold from the one what we were trying 
to give to the other." 

So far the intelligent working men. Even 
more fraught with encouragement and hope 
was the series of Lectures on practical sub- 
jects, addressed to a female audience, to edu- 
cated women, who wished to know what it 



272 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

was best for them to learn before they were 
fitted to help and to teach. I was not present, 
being abroad at the time^, but, as I was in- 
formed, the audience collected was not so 
large as might have been expected. That 
was not surprising ; but what was surprising, 
and delightful too, there were found ready and 
willing to deliver these lectures to ladies " on 
practical subjects," eleven distinguished pro- 
fessional men ; of these, six were clergymen, 
three physicians, and two lawyers. The six 
lectures delivered by clergymen dwelt of course 
chiefly on the duty of well directed benevo- 
lence, in the hospital and in the workhouse, 
in parish supervision, and district visiting : all 
excellent in spirit and feeling. One, on the 
" Teaching by Words," — capital, — as awak- 
ening the intellect to the uses and possible 
abuses of language, as a key to thought as 
well as an implement of thought. Perhaps, if 
women were better taught the true value and 
true significance of words, they would be the 
less likely to pour them forth on light occa- 
sions. 
The three lectures by the medical men. are 



1 



EDUCATION AND TRAINING. 273 

all SO excellent, that I felt lifted up in heart as 
I closed the volume. The two lectures on 
law, {" Law as it affects the Poor," and " San- 
itary Law,") are useful and clear, though 
technical. 

It is not any where indicated in these lec- 
tures, that weakness and ignorance are to be 
accounted as charms in women, by which 
they are to recommend themselves to intelli- 
gent men; or that it is "unfeminine" to study 
the conditions of health ; or that the desire 
to know something of those divine laws, 
"through .which she lives, and moves, and 
has her being," is the result of a " depraved 
imagination ; " or that the wish to prepare 
herself by experience to minister to disease 
and affliction is to be sneered at as a " taste for 
surgery." (I beg of you to observe that I am 
here citing phrases which I have myself he^rd.) 
Another spirit animates the writers of these 
lectures.* Every where the important social 

* Sec particularly tlie lecture on '' The College aild Hospi- 
tal," and the lecture on *' Dispensaries and allied Institu- 
tions," in which the importance, religious and practical, 
attached to the study of physiology, is the same principle for 
which the late Dr. Andrew Combe, and his brother Mr. 
George Combe, have for years past contended. 



274 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

work which rests on the woman is generally- 
acknowledged and wisely inculcated. She is 
encouraged to think, and to carry out thought 
into action. 

The training of a better order of women 
for hospital nurses is that department of social 
usefulness which is more immediately before 
the public, and it involves many consider- 
ations. 

There is no question I have heard more 
warmly contested, than the question of paid 
or unpaid female officials. I think there 
should be both. We should have them of 
two classes ; those who receive direct pay, 
and those who do not. Consider the quali- 
fications required. There must be force of 
character of no common kind; the humility 
which can obey, and the intelligence which 
can rule ; great enthusiasm, great self-com- 
mand, great benevolence ; quickness of per" 
ception with quietness of temper ; the power 
of dealing with the minds of others, and a 
surrender of the whole being to the love and 
service of God : without the religious spirit 



V 



WORKING FOR HIRE. 275 

we can do nothing. Now, can we hope to 
obtain these qualifications for any pay which 
our jails, workhouses, or hospitals could af- 
ford ? — or indeed for any pay whatever ? 
Yet it is precisely an order of women, quite 
beyond the reach of any remuneration that 
could be afforded, which is so imperatively 
required in our institutions. 

The idea of service without pay seems 
quite shocking to some minds, quite unintelli- 
gible ; they quote sententiously, " The laborer 
is worthy of his hire." True ; but what shall 
be that hire ? Must it necessarily be in coin 
of the realm ? There are many women of 
small independent means, who would gladly 
serve their fellow-creatures, requiring nothing 
but the freedom and the means so to devote 
themselves. There are women who would 
prefer " laying up for themselves treasures in 
heaven," to coining their souls into pounds, 
shillings, and pence on earth ; who having 
nothing, ask nothing but a subsistence secured 
to them; and for this are willing to give the 
best that is in them, and work out their lives 
while strength is given them. I believe that 



276 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

such service is especially blessed. I believe 
such service does not weary, is more gracious 
and long-suffering than any other, blessing 
those who give and those who receive. I 
believe it has a potency for good that no 
hired service can have. 

The idea in this country that every thing 
has a money value, to be calculated to a 
farthing, according to the state of the market, 
is so ingrained into us, that the softest sympa- 
thies and highest duties, and dearest privileges 
of Christians, are never supposed to be attain- 
able unless sold and paid for by the week, or 
month, or year. This is so much the case, 
that those who visit the poor people can hardly 
banish from their minds the conviction that 
there is some interested motive, some con- 
cealed, selfish object in doing so. Yet if once 
brought to believe that there is really only the 
wish for their good, how beautiful and how 
blessed becomes the intercourse ! The two 
meanest forms of sensuality and selfishness in 
our lower classes, the love of money and the 
love of drink, are best combated by the com- 
bined religious and feminine influence. A 



WORKING FOR LOVE. 277 

strong barrier to this vulgar greediness would 
be produced, I think, by the presence and 
employment of women officially authorized, 
yet not hired, and doing their duty from pure 
love of God and man.* It would give a 
more elevated standard to many minds, to be 
brought into relation with such women. 

I find the admixture of voluntary and un- 
paid labor with hired labor, thus advocated in 
an excellent article in the " Quarterly Review" 
for September, 1855. " Many there doubtless 
are, who, without neglecting duty, may engage 
in this office' of charity, and thus shun the 
dangers of the world they dread, or find a 
refuge from the hardness of a world which has 



* *' The profound consolation whicli one derives from the 
remembrance of Miss Nightingale's services in the war is that 
they entirely confound the notion that only paid jobs are done 
effectually; that work undertaken from love must be per- 
formed in a slovenly, unbusiness-like way. That has been 
the conviction of our English public; it has been put again 
and again into solemn maxims; and all acts not assuming 
them for their foundation have been laughed to scorn. Miss 
Nightingale has turned the laugh in the other direction. 
There has been slovenliness enough in many departments. 
The tasks that have been done most thoroughly have been 
done from a divine inspiration.*' — Lectures to Ladies on 
Practical Subjects, p. 17. 

24 



278 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

lost its power to please though not to wound 
them ; and thus far at least is clear, that 
whether they sacrifice its pleasures, or seek a 
shelter from its vexations, their presence at the 
sick-bed will diffuse the zeal of love and the 
charm of refinement over an office which has 
hitherto, at the best, been executed with the 
cold regularity of routine." 

But to render the hired labor efficient and 
reliable, it must be placed at the disposal of 
the voluntary and unpaid labor, and be in all 
respects subordinate ; as is the case in King's 
College Hospital. The want of this regula- 
tion produced somxC mischief in the East, 
which I shall have to revert to further on. 

Then, as to whether the women who devote 
themselves to these services should or should 
not be associated into a community, is a ques- 
tion hotly debated, to be settled I think by the 
individual vocation. 

One says, " I cannot work with other peo- 
ple; I must go on in my own way." Well, 
let her go on in her own way, let her go on 
working single-handed as is good in her own 



COMMUNITIES. 279 

eyes; and God forbid that I should under- 
value the good done simply and religiously by 
some excellent women I know working in 
their own way! But another says, " I feel the 
need of a bond of sympathy; it strengthens 
and sustains me. I should like to have my 
work cut out and appointed for me, and to 
labor in association both with • men and wo- 
men." And this is well also. There is room, 
there is work, for both. I think a community 
might be formed on a broader principle than 
that which is contemplated, I believe, by the 
council of the Nightingale fund, for the mere 
preparation of hospital nurses ; but am too 
well aware of the difficulties from within and 
without not to hail a beginning, though it fall 
far short of that which is required ; only we 
must keep our eyes fixed on the larger views. 

Where the objects are of great importance, 
and have to do with our own deepest, inner- 
most life, it requires an especial training of 
the mind and habits to preserve, in the sub- 
jection of the individual will, all the freshness 
and energy of the mental powers. To resign 
the highest privileges of individual action, 



280 THE COMMUNION OF LABO*R. 

and yet preserve the highest privileges of the 
individual conscience, this may be difficult, 
but it has been proved not to be impossible. 
But, I repeat, the individual inclinations and 
gifts must settle this. 

I am sure that my Roman Catholic friends 
are sincere in their belief that such a commu- 
nity can take root and succeed only in their 
Church. At all events, it is the interest of the 
Roman Catholic priesthood to persuade us 
that the power of working a public charitable 
institution by a due admixture of the religious 
and feminine element with the masculine 
directing will, belongs to them only. This is 
very natural on their part, and wise, and quite 
intelligible ; but is it wise of our most influen- 
tial clergymen to play into their hands, to act 
and preach as if this plea were true ? As if 
this privilege of the woman to pervade our 
human institutions with a more tender and 
more moral power, to work openly with a 
species of religious sanction, like the Dea- 
conesses of the primitive Christian Church, 
were really and inseparably interwoven with 
the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 281 

SO that we cannot have Sisters of Charity 
without accepting also an infallible pope, 
transubstantiation, the immaculate concep- 
tion, and Heaven knows what besides, the 
terror and abomination of our evangelicals ? 
Surely it is an injury to the cause of religious 
freedom and human progress, an insult to 
their own peculiar form of faith, for any sect 
to acknowledge that what they allow to be 
good and desirable, and even necessary in 
itself, is inextricable from what they believe 
to be false and ensnaring. These views are 
every day driving distinguished, and gifted, 
and enthusiastic women, into the pale of that 
Church, which stretches out its arms, and 
says, '' Come unto me, ye who are troubled, 
ye who are idle, and I will give you rest and 
work, and, with these, sympathy, and rever- 
ence, the religious sanction, direction, and 
control! " Can we find nothing of all this for 
our women ? Why should they thus go out 
from among us ? I, for my part, do not un- 
derstand it. 

In England it is not the form of Christiani- 
24* 



282 THE COMMUxNION OF LABOR. 

ty we profess which is against such an organ- 
ization of feminine aid in good works as I 
would advocate ; — God forbid ! Yet some 
of our greatest difficulties may be ascribed 
to the deep-rooted puritanic prejudices be- 
queathed to us by our ancestors. It is worth 
considering that the first effect of the Calvin- 
istic reaction against the dominant Church, 
and against the errors, and exaggerations, and 
gross materialism which had been connected 
with the worship of the Virgin Mother, was 
not favorable to women. In the earlier times 
of the Christian Church, whenever certain 
women distinguished themselves by particular 
sanctity or charity, or exercised any especial 
moral or intellectual influence, the Church 
absorbed them, claimed them, held them up 
to reverence during life, and canonized them 
after death; and still their beautiful images 
shine upon us from our cathedral windows, 
or stand out in sculptured forms in all the 
dignity of their hallowed office and venerable 
religious attributes. But after these fair su- 
perstitions had been abrogated by the severity 
of the early reformers, and were succeeded by 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 283 

the strongest prejudice against women exer- 
cising any kind of open and authorized relig- 
ious or spiritual influence, still there were 
women who did exercise such influence, — 
the natural power of strong intellect, or strong 
enthusiasm. The superiority could not be 
denied ; but as it could no longer be referred 
to a larger measure of heavenly gifts, it must 
be derived from demoniac power. Men had 
repudiated angels and saints, but they still 
devoutly believed in devils and witches. The 
benign miracles of female charity were the 
inventions and impositions of a lying priest- 
hood ; but woe unto him who doubted in the 
power of an old woman to ride on a broom- 
stick, or of a young woman to entertain Satan 
as her emissary in mischief! All the women 
who perished by judicial condemnation for 
heresy in the days of the inquisition did not 
equal the number of women condemned ju- 
dicially as witches, — hanged, tortured, burned, 
drowned like mad dogs, — in the first century 
of the Reformed Church ; and these horrors 
were enacted in the most civilized countries 
in Europe, by grave magistrat€>s and ecclesi- 



284 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

astics, who were )3roud of having thrown oil 
the Roman yoke, and of reading their Bibles, 
w^here apparently they found as many texts 
in favor of burning witches as ever did the 
Inquisitors in favor of burning heretics. It 
w^as characteristic of the two diverging super- 
stitions, that in the former age Dante con- 
ceived his Beatrice as the type of loving, wise, 
and spiritual womanhood, leading her lover 
into Paradise; while ]Milton's type of female 
attraction was Eve. the temptress to sin and 
death. The time is come, let us hope, w'hen 
men have found out what w^e may truly be to 
them, not worshipping us as saints, or apos- 
trophizing us as angels, or persecuting us as 
witches, or crushing us as slaves ; revering us 
for that power we are allowed to possess, not 
jealous of it, nor throwing it into some in- 
direct or unhealthy form ; profiting by our 
tenderness, not oppressing us because of it ; 
taking us to themselves as helpers in aU social 
good, not leaving our undirected energies to 
wear away our own lives, and sometimes 
trouble theirs. 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 285 

It is better than a dozen sermons on tol- 
eration, to count up the women who, during 
this half-century, have left the strongest and 
most durable impress on society, — on the 
minds and the hearts of their generation. 
First, there is Mrs. Fry, the Quakeress, to 
whom we owe the cleansing of our prisons, 
and in part the reform of our criminal code ; 
Caroline Chisholm, the Roman Catholic, with 
her strong common sense, her decision and 
independence of character, who may be said 
to have reformed the system of emigration ; 
Mary Carpenter, the Dissenter, who has 
become an authority in all that concerns 
the treatment of juvenile delinquents; and 
Florence Nightingale, the Churchwoman, 
who in our time has opened a new path 
for female charity and female energy. And 
let us remember that there is not one of 
these four admirable women who has not 
been assailed in turn by the bitterest ani- 
mosity, by the most vulgar, so-called rehgious 
abuse from those who differed from them 
in their religious tenets, or from those who 
contemned them, and would have put them 



286 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR* 

down merely as women; not one of them 
who has not outlived prejudice and jealousy; 
not one of them who could have carried out 
their large and beneficent views without the 
aid of generous and enlightened men, — men 
who had . the nobleness of mind to accept 
them as fellow-workers in the cause of hu- 
manity, to admit them on equal terms into 
the communion of labor and the communion 
of charity. 



When I was abroad last year, I was led to 
make inquiries into that system of training 
which had been found so successful in turn- 
ing out efficient, healthful, cheerful, kindly 
women. I found that it varied in the different 
communities, according to the different rules 
and objects of each; but in general these are 
the principal things attended to. 

In the first place, none are accepted, even 
as probationers, who are of a sickly or weak 
organization. 

Every one who is accepted brings a small 
sum of money in her hand, at least 500 



RELIGIOUS COxMMUNITIES. 287 

francs, that is, from about thirty to forty- 
pounds. It is argued, that if a woman be 
at all respectable, and not driven to take up 
a religious and charitable vocation from mere 
want, she must have friends, or find friends, 
to subscribe for her this small dowry. In 
the Order of Charity of Vincent de Paul, 
none are accepted who have filled any ser- 
vile ofiice whatever, even that of a femme- 
de-chambre. On my exclaiming against this 
rule as frequently shutting out women already 
to a certain degree efiicient and experienced, 
my informant answered, " Yes, but it has 
been found by experience that those who 
have been accustomed to sell their services 
for a certain hire, become so imbued by this 
habit, or notion, or feeling, that it is im- 
possible to trust them, or to place confidence 
in the higher principle which may appear 
to have actuated them." " No doubt," she 
added, "there may be exceptions, honorable 
exceptions ; but we are obliged to adhere to 
a general rule, the wisdom of which has 
been justified by two centuries of experience." 
After a probation of six months, none are re- 



288 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

tained in the society whose vocation appears 
weak or uncertain, or who shrink from the 
duties imposed upon them as painful or dif- 
ficult. Everywhere I observed that exceeding 
care is taken to adapt the especial work to 
the individual nature'; a woman, for instance, 
who excels in care and sympathy for children, 
does not always make a good sick-nurse; 
and some women who do not nurse their 
own sex well, are found admirably efficient 
and patient in the men's wards, and in the 
military hospitals. Some have a talent for 
managing the insane, and are instructed ac- 
cordingly. Some who have a particularly 
tender, enthusiastic, and cheerful tempera- 
ment, are found excellent attendants for the 
very aged and incurably infirm. Thus they 
do not clash among themselves, nor does 
each fancy herself fitted for something dif- 
ferent firom what she is set to do. This 
discernment in the selection of fit instru- 
ments, this careful adaptation of the work 
to the natural tendencies, this apportioning 
of the labor to the mental and physical 
strength, is, I am sure, one cause of that 



RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. 289 

cheerfulness and harmony of sphit, that serene 
and healthy look, which we observe in these 
Sisters of Charity, and which reacts in so 
remarkable a manner on the minds and the 
nerves of those to whom they minister. I 
should add, that those who manage the dis- 
pensaries receive a regular medical training, 
under an experienced apothecary. 

In the East, when many of our volunteer 
ladies were ill or " knocked up," and obliged 
to return home ; when the hired nurses were 
either ill or useless through their ignorance, 
disobedience, or immorality, and dismissed in 
disgrace, the well-trained Sisters of Charity or 
of Mercy held on with unflagging spirit and 
energy, never surprised, never put out, ready 
in resource, meeting all difficulties with a 
cheerful spirit ; a superiority which they owed 
to their previous training and experience, not 
certainly to any want of zeal, benevolence, or 
intelligence in their Protestant Sisters of the 
better class. 

I suppose it is well known that they are 
never paid wages, but a certain sum is paid 
by the hospital, or prison, or the family who 
25 



290 



THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 



employ them, to the house or community 
they belong to. The lowest sum is about 
12/. a year, and they are besides provided 
with food and clothing. Those Sisters who 
have a high reputation for skill and expe- 
rience are rated at a higher sum ; and though 
they do not personally derive any profit from 
it, they have, I am told, a just pride in the 
higher value placed on their services.* 

* I have been told of a Frencli Sister of Charity who, for 
many years, attended a certain division of the French army 
in every campaign. On the field of battle, her energy, her 
presence of mind, had saved many lives, and she obtained 
such an influence over the men as rendered her an object of 
deep respect to them and to their of&cers. According to the 
nlle of her order, she had made no distinction on the field of 
battle between friends and enemies, or rather none were 
enemies; and she had received from the military authorities 
of Austria, Prussia, and Russia crosses of merit, in acknow- 
ledgment of the lives she had saved. After the war was 
over, she retired from age and infirmity to the shelter of her 
convent ; but she was allowed to wear these decorations over 
her religious habit, as it appeared to give her pleasure, per- 
haps as much pleasure as a star or a medal might give a 
valiant soldier. From her own people she could, of coui'se, 
receive no reward whatever, it would have been against all 
rule; but they found a recompense for her, which seems to 
me very appropriate, very touching. The minister of war 
conferred on her the privilege of pardoning in every year two 
soldiers condemned to death; and so long as she lived she 
exercised this privilege. She died, I believe, about four or 
five years ago. 



RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. 291 

How far these rules and regulations may- 
be found applicable among ourselves, must 
be a matter of consideration and experiment. 
I am inclined to think that many of them 
might be adopted, if once those unreal spectral 
difficulties, which strike terror into supersti- 
tious minds, could be surmounted. 

For instance, in matters of dress we are in 
this country too apt to consider the adoption of 
any particular costume as popish and fantas- 
tical ; that is to say, we admit the despotism 
of fashion, we rebel against the suggestion of 
reason ; we profess a boundless submission to 
the French milliners, wear modes of dress 
against which good taste, convenience, even 
our purses and our sense of propriety revolt ; 
we protest against them, but dare not walk 
the street except in a bonnet the most odious, 
the most unbecoming, the most garish, the 
most unfeminine, that insane fantasy ever 
invented. Meantime, if a dress be contrived 
to meet the requirements and proprieties of 
a certain vocation, unobtrusive, close-fitting, 
commodious, seemly, we rebel against it, we 



292 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

repudiate any interference with our individual 
liberty, individual caprice, and individual 
bad taste. We forget that the dress has its 
morale^ — that if it be capable of affecting the 
imagination through the senses in a draw- 
ing-room, it will have the same power in a 
sick-room, and that it ought not to be left 
in the power of ignorance, or vulgarity, or 
thoughtlessness, to do through trifling means 
a real mischief. 

Lately, in walking through the sick wards 
of a workhouse, I spoke to two hired nurses, 
who had been sent from our great hospitals 
to superintend and train the pauper nurses 
(a recent innovation, by the way, and one of 
excellent promise). One of these women 
wore a washed-out chintz gown of gay colors, 
a dirty pink ribbon with a gilt gaudy brooch 
about her neck ; and on her head a very dirty 
cap, with dangling white beads. The other 
woman was in similar attire, except that her 
very dirty cap was decorated with faded, dirty, 
artificial flowers. In both cases the attire 
had all the appearance of having come out 
of a second-hand frippery shop; in both cases 



RELIGIOUS COMxMUNITIES. 293 

the desire was the same, to be distinguished 
from the pauper nurses, who wore the always 
odious workhouse dress : therefore, these re- 
spectable women flaunted in the habiliments 
of a street-walker. 

K a physician came to prescribe for our 
sick or dying friend in the dress of a fast 
Oxonian dandy, or a sporting flash man, 
should we approve of it? Yet here is the 
same direct violation of decency and good 
feeling. I contend that this is not right ; 
that there is a fitness in things which those 
who do not intuitively appreciate should be 
taught. 

The genuine horror of a community of 
women associated for religious and charitable 
purposes entertained by some most excellent 
people, who are accustomed to see things 
only on one side and from one side, is hardly 
conceivable by those who have looked into 
the working of such communities ; for in- 
stance, I find, in a very charming little book, 
the following passage of eloquent objurga- 
tion : — 

25* 



294 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

" Look out," says the writer, " a clever, 
enthusiastic woman, with a strong will of 
her own, and no stronger will to control it; 
make her the Lady Superior of a sisterhood, 
without any man to come, with a weight of 
years, authority and holiness, to say to her, 
this must not be, — that would be very silly, 
or unreasonable, or improper, and I positively 
forbid it:* — do this, and you will do the 
devil's work in frustrating a means of good 
as effectually as himself could do. You will 
get sisterhoods in all the slavish misery of 
nuns, and with none of the protection of 
convents, — a pack of unhappy women, for- 
bidden to exercise common sense, and ren- 
dered morbid, sensitive, and undevout by the 
system which the uncontrolled power of the 
Lady Superior exercises over them ; and not 
rarely you will hav.e the Lady Superior go 
crazy, because of the unlimited indulgence of 



* Hence we are to infer tliat it is a reproach to a Protestant 
Sisterhood that they are emancipated from such control ; while 
one of the strongest objections made to the Roman Catholic 
Sisters of Charity is, that they are under the control and dic- 
tation of the priests. 



RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. 295 

her talent for government." * Of course, if 
you do this^ if you build with bad materials, 
your edifice will be crazy. But why take it 
for granted that your material is to be bad, 
or that the devil is of necessity to interfere ? 
Now, over against this gratuitous picture of a 
sisterhood, let us place another of a brother- 
hood by way of pendant. 

Take a house intended by Christians to 
be an asylum for the poor ; fill it with some 
hundreds of the ruined, the reckless, the de- 
praved ; the aged, the helpless, the homeless ; 
with wailing infants, with unwed mothers, 
and all the infinite grades of sin and suffering. 
Bring this mass of human agonies together ; 
cram them close in horrid propinquity, in 
filth, and fetid air, — the evil to deprave the 
good, the better-educated where curses and 
the foulest language pollute their ears ; place 
this institution, — this Christian, charitable 
institution, — under the government of a set of 
men, armed with a grim authority, called, as 
if in mockery, "guardians of the poor;" let 

* The Owlet. 



296 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

there be no woman near them, to whisper 
" this is wrong," or " that is cruel and unrea- 
sonable, and in the name of a God of mercy 
I forbid it;" let there be no cheerful, genial 
influence there, no gentle voice nor light 
tread, but drunken viragoes to nurse the sick, 
and insolent officials to feed the hungry : do 
this, and you will have something as near 
as possible to what we can conceive of an 
earthly Hell, — you will have an ill-managed 
Parish Workhouse. 

But why picture as necessary and inevi- 
table extremes which we may hope are only 
accidental? Why imagine a "pack of wo- 
men " on one hand, and a " pack of men " on 
the other ? Suppose we were to try what 
might be the effect of neutralizing the mobility, 
sensibility, and excitability of the women by 
the firmness and judgment of the men? 
Would not that be better ? 



CONCLUSION. 297 

I MUST now conclude with a few last 
words. 

We cannot look around us without seeing 
that a demand has not only been created, but 
becomes every day increasingly urgent, for a 
supply of working women at once more effi- 
cient and more effective. I use the words 
advisedly as distinct in meaning ; women and 
men too are efficient through energy and ex- 
perience, and effective through higher gifts 
and sympathies, — higher aims and motives; 
materially efficient, morally effective. Mean- 
time, with no want of zeal or aptitude, there is 
such a lamentable deficiency in training, in 
knowledge, in the means or opportunity of 
acquiring either, that I should despair, — if I 
were not too old to despair, — if I had not so 
often counted up the price we have to pay for 
truth, and the penance we must pay for false- 
hood too. If, among the hapless women I see 
struggling to bring their external existence 
into harmony with their inner life, — or what 
is harder still, to bring their inner life into 
subjection to harsh and deteriorating circum- 
stance, — one half should go distracted, and 



29y THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

the other half turn Roman Catholics, I might 
" even die with pity ; '' but' certainly not yield 
up one inch of the ground I have taken, nor 
one iota of the faith that is in me. 

I remember that, when speaking on these 
subjects to a very benevolent and accomplished 
man, a clergyman, he said thoughtfully : " I 
have little doubt that you are right ; and yet 
if there be such a divine law involving all 
human well-being and progress in its recogni- 
tion, — how is it that it has not been more 
distinctly revealed to us ? how is it that it 
comes to us now like a novelty to be sub- 
jected to the examination of the sceptical and 
the carping of the foolish ? " 

I did not answer. 

We know that there has existed from the 
commencement of the creation a law of God, 
binding the whole universe into one harmoni- 
ous whole, guiding the planets in their orbits, 
connecting our own world with far-off worlds 
of light and life, and at the same tinie so 
regulating our least movements on this earth, 
that we cannot put one foot before the other, 
but in subjection to it. Yet of the existence 



CONCLUSION. 299 

of this law we knew nothing, till, one hundred 
and fifty years ago, the fall of an apple re- 
vealed it to Newton ; and to what revelations 
most important to our well-being has it not 
since led ! And may there not be a law of 
moral and physical life as universal, as essen- 
tial, as eternal, which in its agency has always 
been felt, and yet in its relation to happiness 
and progress, is only just beginning to be 
understood, and not yet fully applied? I 
do not say it is so ; but may it not possibly 
be so ? 

In general there is among men, — superior 
men, — a strong, generous sympathy with the 
cause I advocate. How noble and good I 
have found them ! how raised in their manly 
power above all vulgar masculine jealousies ! 
Yet some among them, some practical men so 
called, who start at shadows, — some members 
of parliament who weigh truth and expediency 
against each other in their political balance, 
— some clergymen, bending down from the 
height of their white neckcloths, half-sympa- 
thizing, half-patronizing, — these say to me, 



300 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. ^SSAi 

" We really cannot deal with abstract prin- 
ciples, we must work with such material as 
we have at hand. What is your plan ? If 
we knew what plan you have formed we 
might help you. What do you propose to 
do ? " 

I must confess I have no plan ready pre- 
pared, and so exquisitely contrived to avoid 
offence that, like a mill-wheel with all the cogs 
shaved off that it may work smoothly, it will 
impart no movement, and do neither good nor 
harm. But if there be vitality in the principle 
I have placed before you, — the communion 
of love and of labor, — then that which springs 
out of it will be vital too, not working like a 
machine, but bearing fruit like the tree. 

And " what would I do ? " they ask. Noth- 
ing more can I do ihdeed, but that which I 
am now doing, or rather trying to do, with 
such small power as God has given me. 

I would place before you, this once more, 
ere I turn to other duties, that most indispen- 
sable yet hardly acknowledged truth, that 
'at the core of all social reformation, as a 
necessary, condition of health and permanency 



CONCLUSION. 301 

in all human institutions, lies the working of 
the man and the woman together, in mutual 
trust, love, and reverence. 

I would impress it now for the last time on 
the hearts and the consciences of those who 
hear me, that there is an essential, eternal law 
of life, affirmed and developed by the teaching 
of Christ, which if you do not take into 
account, your ifine social machinery, however 
ingeniously and plausibly contrived, will at 
last fall into corruption and ruin. V/herever 
men and women do not work together help- 
fully and harmoniously in accordance with 
the domestic relations, — wherever there is 

not THE COMMUNION OF LOVE AND THE COM- 
MUNION OF LABOR,' — there must necessarily 
enter the elements of discord and decay. 

Despair we cannot, dare not. 

If men bring their conventionalities and 
practicabilities into conflict with the natural 
law of God's divine appointment, we know 
which must in the end succumb. Meantime 
I would, if possible, assist in diminishing 
the duration and the pain of that conflict. 
26 



302 THE COMMUNION OF LABOR. 

If any thing I have now spoken carry 
conviction into the kind hearts around me, 
help! those who can and will, — and God 
help us all ! 



THE END. 



I 



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